{"id":148559,"date":"2021-12-30T06:57:02","date_gmt":"2021-12-30T06:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/?p=148559"},"modified":"2021-12-30T06:57:02","modified_gmt":"2021-12-30T06:57:02","slug":"how-china-snuffed-out-democracy-in-hong-kong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/world-news\/how-china-snuffed-out-democracy-in-hong-kong\/","title":{"rendered":"How China \u2018snuffed out\u2019 democracy in Hong Kong"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Hong Kong: <\/strong>As the days of 2021 dwindled, so did any remaining traces of democracy in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, a vocal pro-democracy media outlet \u2013 one of the last openly critical voices in the city \u2013 closed after a police raid. Earlier in December, the opposition was shut out from elections under a new law that puts all candidates to a loyalty test. And monuments commemorating the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were taken down.<\/p>\n<p>Again and again throughout the year, the city\u2019s authorities and the central government in Beijing stamped out nearly everything the pro-democracy movement had stood for. Activists fled abroad or were locked up under the draconian National Security Law imposed on the city 18 months ago. Unions and other independent organisations closed down.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static.ffx.io\/images\/$zoom_0.126%2C$multiply_0.4431%2C$ratio_1.5%2C$width_756%2C$x_0%2C$y_0\/t_crop_custom\/q_86%2Cf_auto\/69e5e5af717114ae23df03dd9e54f13f87d37e76\" height=\"224\" width=\"335\"><\/p>\n<p><span>Protesters hold slogans reading \u201cProtest Against Totalitarian Liquidation of Stand News\u201d and \u201d Support Press Freedom in Hong Kong\u201d in Taipei, Taiwan, on THursday.<\/span><cite class=\"ojLwA\"><span>Credit:<\/span>AP<\/cite><\/p>\n<p>Where once Hong Kong allowed \u201copen opposition and questioning of the government\u2019s core policies and legitimacy &#8230; any meaningful policy debates will now take place among a small circle of government loyalists,\u201d said Kurt Tong, partner at The Asia Group and former US consul general in Hong Kong and Macao.<\/p>\n<p>The days when the former British colony was considered a bastion of freedom fade in memory. Returned to China in 1997, Hong Kong has endured an overhaul of its political system and a crackdown on political dissent. Authorities sought to suppress anti-government sentiment that led to months of political strife in 2019.<\/p>\n<p>The most recent example was Wednesday\u2019s raid by Hong Kong police on the online pro-democracy news outlet <em>Stand News<\/em>. Seven people were arrested \u2014 among them two current and former editors and four former board members, including a popular singer, Denise Ho \u2014 for alleged sedition under a colonial-era ordinance.<\/p>\n<p>The outlet announced that afternoon that it would halt operations.<\/p>\n<p><em>Stand News<\/em> was the second media outlet to shut down after being targeted by Hong Kong authorities. The <em>Apple Daily<\/em> newspaper closed earlier in the year after authorities raided its offices for a second time and froze millions in assets.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDemocracy has been under a sustained assault for well over a year in Hong Kong,\u201d said Luke de Pulford, a coordinator for the London-based Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, a group of legislators from democratic countries focused on relations with China. \u201cNo democracy can function without a free press.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf no critical information is able to be published about the administration in Hong Kong or in China, then what last vestiges of democracy there were, I think we have to say, have been snuffed out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a string of tweets, Hong Kong activist Nathan Law called upon the world to \u201cpublish about Hong Kong &#8230; [and] about the brave journalists who risk so much.\u201d Law, who fled to London after the security law was implemented, said he feared \u201ca domino effect\u201d that would lead other outlets to close.<\/p>\n<p>Little remains of Hong Kong\u2019s pro-democracy movement. More than 100 pro-democracy figures and others have been arrested under the security law, which penalises actions seen as separatist or subverting the Hong Kong or Chinese governments.<\/p>\n<p>That includes 47 people charged with subversion in February over their roles in an unofficial primary election held in 2020 to determine the best candidates to field in planned legislative elections.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/static.ffx.io\/images\/$zoom_0.183%2C$multiply_0.3541%2C$ratio_1.776846%2C$width_1059%2C$x_0%2C$y_38\/t_crop_custom\/q_86%2Cf_auto\/881cbeca1eddb64e9e1d201439bafa70e58c08dd\" height=\"212\" width=\"375\"><\/p>\n<p><span>Hong Kong\u2019s Apple Daily newspaper and website stop publishing in June 2021.<\/span><cite class=\"ojLwA\"><span>Credit:<\/span>Bloomberg<\/cite><\/p>\n<p>Authorities accused the activists of subversion, saying they planned to win a majority and use it to paralyse the government and eventually force Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam to step down.<\/p>\n<p>The government postponed the 2020 elections, citing public health risks from COVID-19. Then, the central government in Beijing announced new election laws earlier this year that reduced the proportion of directly elected seats to less than a quarter and required all candidates to be loyal to Beijing.<\/p>\n<p>The results were predictable. Earlier this month, when the election finally was held, pro-Beijing politicians won a landslide victory. The city\u2019s largest opposition party, the Democratic Party, fielded no candidates for the first time since the 1997 handover.<\/p>\n<p>Several pro-democracy trade unions and organisations have also been dissolved this year. The city\u2019s largest teachers\u2019 union disbanded in August due to the political climate, followed later by the city\u2019s largest independent trade union.<\/p>\n<p>The Civil Human Rights Front, a pro-democracy group that organised some of the biggest protests in 2019, also disbanded following a police investigation under the National Security law.<\/p>\n<p>Other pro-democracy activists have also been arrested for involvement in unauthorised protests and the annual Tiananmen candlelight vigil, which has been banned for two consecutive years. Most of the city\u2019s pro-democracy activists are behind bars or have fled abroad.<\/p>\n<p>As the year drew to a close, several artworks were removed that commemorated the Tiananmen massacre.<\/p>\n<p>Two days before Christmas, the University of Hong Kong cited legal risks in ordering the removal of the <em>Pillar of Shame<\/em> monument, which depicts a pile of torn and twisted bodies of Tiananmen victims. Several other universities followed suit, making away with pro-democracy and Tiananmen statues.<\/p>\n<p>China\u2019s Communist Party has long sought to erase the Tiananmen Square massacre from the public consciousness in the mainland, forbidding any commemorative events. Now it seems determined to do the same in Hong Kong in the name of restoring stability to the city.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AP<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>Most Viewed in World<\/h2>\n<h3>From our partners<\/h3>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theage.com.au\/world\/asia\/how-china-snuffed-out-democracy-in-hong-kong-20211230-p59kv0.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hong Kong: As the days of 2021<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":148558,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23056],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How China \u2018snuffed out\u2019 democracy in Hong Kong - Pre Coin News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/world-news\/how-china-snuffed-out-democracy-in-hong-kong\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How China \u2018snuffed out\u2019 democracy in Hong Kong - 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