On the eve of the 28th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China and the fifth anniversary of the promulgation of Hong Kong’s National Security Law, the pro-democracy party League of Social Democrats (LSD), the last active pro-democracy party in Hong Kong, on Sunday announced its disbandment due to “immense political pressure,” marking another major casualty of Beijing’s years-long crackdown on dissent in the “Pearl of the Orient.”
Following massive anti-extradition bill protests in 2019, Beijing in 2020 imposed the National Security Law to criminalize secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign collusion, which has a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, aiming to curb dissent and end pro-democracy protests.
Hong Kong security agencies said that since 2020, at least 332 people, mostly pro-democracy activists, have been detained and 189 companies have been prosecuted for various national security offenses under the law.
A Human Rights Watch report released this week showed that Hong Kong authorities have continued to persecute protesters who participated in the 2019 protests, arresting 10,279 people and prosecuting 2,976 as of April.
Dozens of civil society groups have also been dissolved, and at least 14 independent news outlets shut down. The Civic Party closed in 2023, while the Democratic Party, Hong Kong’s oldest and biggest pro-democracy party, in February announced that it would disband. The LSD was the last pro-democracy party that still occasionally held small street protests and booth activities despite the risks.
LSD chairperson Chan Po-ying (陳寶瑩) said: “While we are now forced to disband and feel an ache in our conscience, we have no other choice.”
Amnesty International Hong Kong Overseas said that LSD’s dissolution “reveals the near purging of Hong Kong’s pan-democratic political parties and civil society organizations.”
Chinese and Hong Kong authorities are still widening the dragnet to crush the opposition, with “sedition” frequently used to target a wide range of peaceful expression, including children’s books, independent journalism and social media posts.
Copying tactics long used by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to surveil its people, Hong Kong in 2020 set up a national security hotline to incentivize citizens to report one another. Hong Kong authorities claimed to have received more than 920,000 tip-offs as of last month.
Hong Kong has been a canary in the coal mine for Taiwan, providing bloody lessons. The semi-autonomy and freedom China promised Hong Kong in the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1997 has already vanished. The “one country, two systems” model has become “one country, one system,” with the CCP cementing its supremacy to dominate the territory.
As the “one country, two systems” model China used to promote cross-strait unification has been rejected by most Taiwanese, Beijing has introduced a slew of national security-related legislation to target Taiwanese and threaten Taiwan’s autonomy. With the growing number of Taiwanese being harassed and “disappeared” in China, the CCP has unveiled its ambition to take Taiwan under its autocratic control.
In Hong Kong, the CCP turned the government into a political proxy and its legislative body into a rubber stamp to solidify Chinese control. Beijing has also deployed such proxy warfare in Taiwan, manipulating pro-China forces into repeatedly echoing the CCP’s “one China” principle and twisting the facts about Taiwanese sovereignty in an attempt to counter Taiwanese unity and national consciousness.
Facing China’s ambition, safeguarding Taiwanese democracy and sovereignty, and not following in Hong Kong’s footsteps, is a challenge, but it is a mandatory task for all Taiwanese.
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