The continued existence of the Democratic Party in Hong Kong had given a flicker of hope that a path remained to improving the political situation in the former British colony. That faint flicker looks like it would soon be extinguished.
Established in 1994, a few years before the UK government’s official handover of Hong Kong to Beijing in 1997, the Democratic Party is the oldest and largest extant pro-democracy party in the territory. At times accused of being cautious in its advocacy, the party followed a pragmatic approach to achieving reform, and was the only party in Hong Kong that negotiated directly with Beijing’s Hong Kong Liaison Office.
It was through this relationship that party members were informed by Chinese officials that Beijing had lost its patience with the party, and that they should prepare to disband or face serious consequences.
In truth, the writing has been on the wall for some time. While the final decision to disband has yet to be made, a party general meeting on Sunday concluded with 90 percent of members voting to move forward with the process.
Any vestigial effort to improve the rights situation in Hong Kong has to be organized from outside. Amnesty International on Tuesday announced that it had relaunched its Hong Kong branch “in exile,” after its two offices in the territory were closed in 2021 following the introduction of Hong Kong’s National Security Law the previous year. Registered in Switzerland, the office’s operations are to be orchestrated by Hong Kongers in Taiwan, Australia, Canada, the UK and the US.
The system in Hong Kong has been so entirely subsumed by Beijing’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime as to make any reference to it as separate from China irrelevant. Democracy in Hong Kong is dead, and the CCP has killed it.
British lawmaker Wera Hobhouse on Thursday last week was denied entry into Hong Kong. Hobhouse said that she had been given no reason. A Hong Kong government spokesperson said only: “The person concerned knows best what he or she has done.”
The Hong Kong government gave the impression that there was no need to explain the denial, almost as if it was surprised the question even had to be asked. Perhaps it had a right to be, at which point the question becomes, why should anybody be surprised that the authorities act like this in the new Hong Kong?
Hobhouse should not have been surprised that she was turned away. She is a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). There is little love lost between the CCP and IPAC. Reports of the denial say that Hobhouse was the first British MP to have received that kind of treatment since the 1997 handover. However, it is not entirely without precedent.
In 2014, a British delegation seeking to visit Hong Kong to monitor adherence to the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration was refused entry. Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) at the time said “Britain has no sovereignty over Hong Kong ... and no right to oversight.” Actually, according to the agreement, it did.
Three years later, ministry spokesman Lu Kang (陸慷) said the declaration is “a historical document that no longer has any realistic meaning.” That unilateral interpretation should not be surprising, either.
The British government might have been offended that a British MP was turned away from its former colony, but Hobhouse was not refused entry into Hong Kong, she was turned away from China. Did nobody listen to what Hua and Lu said? What has happened to Hong Kong is tragic, but nobody should be surprised.
The muting of the line “I’m from Taiwan” (我台灣來欸), sung in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), during a performance at the closing ceremony of the World Masters Games in New Taipei City on May 31 has sparked a public outcry. The lyric from the well-known song All Eyes on Me (世界都看見) — originally written and performed by Taiwanese hip-hop group Nine One One (玖壹壹) — was muted twice, while the subtitles on the screen showed an alternate line, “we come here together” (阮作伙來欸), which was not sung. The song, performed at the ceremony by a cheerleading group, was the theme
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised eyebrows recently when he declared the era of American unipolarity over. He described America’s unrivaled dominance of the international system as an anomaly that was created by the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. Now, he observed, the United States was returning to a more multipolar world where there are great powers in different parts of the planet. He pointed to China and Russia, as well as “rogue states like Iran and North Korea” as examples of countries the United States must contend with. This all begs the question:
Liberals have wasted no time in pointing to Karol Nawrocki’s lack of qualifications for his new job as president of Poland. He has never previously held political office. He won by the narrowest of margins, with 50.9 percent of the vote. However, Nawrocki possesses the one qualification that many national populists value above all other: a taste for physical strength laced with violence. Nawrocki is a former boxer who still likes to go a few rounds. He is also such an enthusiastic soccer supporter that he reportedly got the logos of his two favorite teams — Chelsea and Lechia Gdansk —
RSS