Hong Kong activists yesterday called on the US to pressure Beijing over dissidents languishing in Chinese jails during talks this week.
A group of protesters marched to the US consulate general to highlight the plight of about 20 high-profile writers, lawyers and political activists currently imprisoned in China.
Albert Ho (何俊仁), a Hong Kong lawmaker and chairman of China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group, said the US must stand up for human rights and not be cowed by China’s growing economic might.
“I hope the US and the international community can make the message clear to China that despite its rise in economic power, the country should feel shameful about its the lack of progress on the human rights front,” Ho said. “We earnestly call on the US representatives to clearly present the information about these prisoners of conscience to the representatives of the Chinese government during the human rights dialogue.”
The talks are to be held in Washington yesterday and today.
The group presented a petition to a representative for the US consulate general.
The dissidents highlighted in the protest included Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), a writer and former professor who was sentenced to 11 years in prison on subversion charges after he co-authored “Charter 08,” a manifesto calling for political reform in China.
Protesters also asked the US to press the case of human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng (高智晟), who has gone missing again recently after being released from police custody for defending workers, underground Christians and the banned Falungong spiritual movement.
In related news, when five Hong Kong opposition legislators resigned in January, they hoped to engineer a face-off against Beijing loyalists that would pressure China to step up democratic reforms in this former British colony.
Instead, this Sunday they are running for their old seats against unknown candidates amid little voter interest in what critics call a failed campaign that won’t sway Beijing in the least.
“We are now at a point where no one — not even those who forced the by-election — knows exactly what they are supposed to achieve,” Hong Kong political commentator Michael Chugani wrote in a column in the South China Morning Post this week.
While the ex-legislators concede that they have failed to excite the Hong Kong public, they argue they have rekindled discussion about the lack of democracy in this semiautonomous Chinese territory of 7 million people, which enjoys Western-style civil liberties, but whose leader is chosen by an 800-member committee with a pro-Beijing bias.
The 60-member legislature is half-elected, half chosen by interest groups, many of them representing business sectors.
One of the five, Raymond Wong, said even if only 600,000 people head to the polls in this city of 3.4 million registered voters and re-elect them — a lowly turnout of just 18 percent — it still makes for a strong political statement.
The activists were inspired by the potential of another successful mass movement in Hong Kong. On July 1, 2003, half-a-million Hong Kongers flooded the streets to protest proposed national security legislation wanted by Beijing. The Hong Kong government shelved the bill, and the landmark demonstration spawned another wave of large pro-democracy protests.
“It’s very difficult to move an authoritarian government. Only people power can shock it,” Wong said.
But times are different. Hong Kong’s economy is recovering from the recent global financial crisis, while in 2003, it was reeling from the devastating impact of the SARS outbreak. A protest rallying support for the referendum campaign last month drew just 1,000 people. Independent polls conducted by the University of Hong Kong last month have consistently indicated widespread opposition to the campaign — the latest announced showing 26 percent for, 53 percent against, with the remaining 20 percent undecided or expressing mixed feelings. The polls had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
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