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(CNN) – For more than two decades, Hong Kong has been China’s freest city, a status symbolized by two things: regular street protests and elections to the city’s legislature.
Both are supposedly guaranteed by the policy of one country, two systems that Hong Kong ruled after the handover of British to Chinese rule in 1997, making the city the only place in China where vocal opposition was protected, or even allowed. to the Communist Party.
This year, China’s leaders targeted both rights. In June, in response to months of increasingly violent anti-government unrest in 2019, Beijing imposed a national security law on the city. The legislation, which was bypassed by Hong Kong’s semi-democratic parliament, prohibited subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, with severe prison terms for anyone who breaches it.
This week, China’s leaders provided another weapon to further clamp down on dissent, giving local authorities, led by CEO Carrie Lam, sweeping new powers to oust lawmakers they consider unpatriotic without going through court.
Four pro-democracy lawmakers were quickly expelled from the city parliament on Wednesday in the wake of the new directive. They will be followed by the entire pan-democratic opposition camp, which shortly after announced its decision to resign en masse in protest.
Lam, the Beijing-backed city leader, has defended Beijing’s ruling. At a press conference on Wednesday, he said that those who do not respect China’s sovereignty “cannot genuinely perform their duties as legislators.”
“I welcome diverse opinion in the Legislative Council and respect checks and balances,” Lam said, adding that “all of those responsibilities must be exercised responsibly.”
The new, sweeping measure is just Beijing’s latest invasion of Hong Kong’s supposed autonomy, effectively removing the last avenue left for city residents to voice political dissent.
Just over a year after last summer’s pro-democracy protests, which at their peak drew more than a million people, Hong Kong is much more like China, where you can’t go out on the streets, no It can. participate in free and open elections, and cannot express significant opposition to the government without the risk of imprisonment.
While the Hong Kong legislature is likely to continue with a string of pro-Beijing lawmakers pursuing something akin to democratic governance, the reality is likely to come closer to the Chinese model of one-party government.
Legislature neutralized
On July 1, 1997, the day Hong Kong officially became part of the People’s Republic of China, Martin Lee, founder of the city’s Democratic Party, called on Beijing to keep promises made to its new citizens.
Referring to the agreement signed with the British that Hong Kong hands over to the Chinese government, Lee said that China’s leaders had promised “we will have an elected legislature and that our freedoms will continue under the rule of law.”
That was more than 23 years ago. Lee is now 82 years old, white hair and a symbol of the kind of patriotic opposition imagined by one country, two systems.
Lee had been part of the only legislature in the city’s history to be elected in its entirety, in the final months of the British government, before Beijing dissolved it and replaced it with an appointed body.
Progress toward greater democracy in the years that followed was scant at best. Now, under President Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, and also the most intolerant of all dissidents, whether in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet or within the Communist Party itself, any possibility of further reforms has died. .
In the months since Beijing imposed the national security law on Hong Kong, it has drastically reformed the city’s policy. Activists have fled abroad or gone underground, political parties have disbanded, and once the well-known protest signs and slogans have disappeared, many people are exercising self-censorship rather than breaking the new law.
While there have been sporadic protests this year, the new law, combined with strict restrictions on gatherings due to the coronavirus, which remain in effect despite a dearth of cases from Hong Kong, has effectively neutralized the protest movement, and has not been nothing like riots. seen for most of 2019.
This renewed focus in the legislature, now the only potential avenue to prevent further usurpation of Hong Kong’s autonomy, virtually eliminates the city’s remaining formalized opposition to Beijing.
Buoyed by a landslide victory in the November 2019 local elections, opposition activists had high hopes of winning a majority in the Legislative Council. Slightly less than half of the seats in parliament are not democratically elected, but rather are chosen by companies and special interest groups known as functional constituencies, most of which are reliably pro-Beijing, but a handful are believed to be it could be win.
On July 31, however, the city’s leader, Lam, announced that the September elections would be postponed, again citing the coronavirus. At the same time, counting officials banned a dozen opposition candidates, including former student leader Joshua Wong.
The national security law was given as a justification for this, cementing its role as a pretext for apparently whatever action the Hong Kong government wants to take. The move appeared to ensure that the elections, when they did come, would generate opposition in name only, causing the existing parliament to stretch out for another year, perhaps the last chance to act as a check on Beijing-appointed officials.
Even before this week, the city’s legislature had weakened, perhaps fatally. Despite millions of people taking to the streets in June 2019 to oppose the extradition bill that started the riots, opposition lawmakers were unable to stop its passage: the only thing that did was the literal blockade of the building. of parliament by protesters.
This ineffectiveness, which prompted some protesters to call for the elections to be abandoned altogether, did not stop Hong Kong officials and Beijing representatives in the city from complaining that opposition lawmakers were trying to enact obstruction laws or organize protests. inside the camera, actions that were ultimately little more than theater. But theater that meant a degree of opposition that is no longer allowed in Xi’s Hong Kong.
According to this week’s ruling by the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, Hong Kong lawmakers who are seen as promoting or supporting the independence of the city from China, or who refuse to recognize Beijing’s sovereignty “will immediately lose. your qualifications. “
The same will happen with elected legislators who “seek foreign forces to intervene in Hong Kong affairs, or who have endangered national security” and who “do not comply with the Basic Law”, the city’s constitution, as well as with those that are considered “not faithful to the legal requirements and conditions” of the territory.
Claudia Mo, a legislator for the Democratic Party, described the move as “putting the nail in the fight for democracy in Hong Kong.”
“From now on, no one who considers himself politically incorrect will not be able to stand in the elections,” Mo said. “They are making sure that only patriots can join the Hong Kong political elections.
In his speech 23 years ago, Martin Lee noted: “Hong Kong is known as the Pearl of the East. But what is it that gives the pearl its great brilliance? It is freedom. The freedom exercised to the fullest by our people and guaranteed by the rule of law. If our freedom is taken away, the Pearl will lose its shine and, indeed, its value to China and the world. “
“The flame of democracy has been lit and burns in the hearts of our people,” he added. “It will not be extinguished.”
This week, it may have been.
This story was first published on CNN.com “Beijing gives up even pretending to allow opposition in Hong Kong”
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