A growing independence campaign in Hong Kong is a terrible mistake that undermines the territory’s push for democracy and serves merely to provoke Beijing, Chris Patten, the last governor of the former British colony, said yesterday.
Speaking after a speech to a packed Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Patten said that while democratic development in Hong Kong had been disappointingly slow, independence was not the answer.
“There is no stronger supporter of democracy in Hong Kong than me, but to confuse that campaign with a campaign for independence is a terrible mistake,” said Patten, who governed from 1992 to 1997.
“It reduces support for democracy, it undermines the moral high ground which I think was achieved by students in 2014. It provokes not just officials of the Chinese Communist Party [CCP], but it provokes the people of mainland China,” he said.
China took back control of Hong Kong in 1997 through a “one country, two systems” formula that allows wide-ranging freedoms, a separate legal system and specifies universal suffrage as an eventual goal.
Beijing’s refusal to grant full democracy saw tens of thousands of students take to the streets in late 2014, protests that presented the central government with one of its greatest challenges in decades. Patten supported the students’ demands.
Patten’s comments on independence come after the issue grabbed international attention this month when Beijing intervened to effectively bar two pro-independence Hong Kong legislators from being sworn into office.
The move came after Yau Wai-ching (游蕙禎), 25, and Sixtus “Baggio” Leung (梁頌恆), 30, pledged allegiance to the “Hong Kong nation” and displayed a banner declaring “Hong Kong is not China” during a swearing-in ceremony for the Legislative Council last month.
Referring to Hong Kong’s much-vaunted rule of law, Patten said he was “fairly” confident in it, although he acknowledged there had been some issues and people in the city were anxious.
“There is nervousness that something which has been so fundamental to Hong Kong’s success as a city and as an economy may be tampered with. I don’t think that will happen. But it’s a concern. People are nervous that it may happen,” he said.
Patten voiced concern over the case of five booksellers who went missing late last year, amid fears two were abducted — one from Hong Kong and one from Thailand — by Chinese agents. Four of the booksellers, who sold gossipy books about Chinese leaders, returned to Hong Kong and one, a Swedish national, remains in detention in mainland China.
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