HONG KONG (AP) – When the British handed over Hong Kong to Beijing in 1997, it was promised 50 years of self-government and freedom of assembly, speech and press, which are not allowed in communist-ruled mainland China.
With the 7.4 million-strong city celebrating 25 years under Beijing on Friday, those promises are running out. The period of Hong Kong’s honeymoon, when it lasted a long time, as always, has passed and its future remains uncertain, determined by forces beyond its control.
Prior to the broadcast, many in Hong Kong worried that life would change when Beijing took power. Thousands rushed to reside elsewhere, and some moved abroad. For the first decade, such measures seemed too dramatic – this bustling bastion of capitalism on China’s south coast seems to have retained its freedoms and the economy is thriving.
In recent years, Beijing has expanded its influence and control. These moves appear to have been accelerated by mass pro-democracy protests in 2014 and 2019. Schools now have to provide lessons in patriotism and national security, and some new textbooks deny that Hong Kong was once a British colony.
Electoral reforms ensure that there are no opposition lawmakers in the city’s legislature, only those whom Beijing considers “patriots,” silencing the once-heated debate over how to run the city. China has appointed John Lee, a career security officer, as the successor to CEO Kari Lam.
Freedom of the press has been under attack, and pro-democracy newspapers openly critical of the government, such as Apple Daily, have been forced to close. Its publisher, Jimmy Lai, has been jailed.
Hong Kong has also banned annual protests marking China’s repression on June 4, 1989, against the pro-democracy movement concentrated in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, citing pandemic safeguards. Tourism and business in the city are shaken by adherence to strict COVID-0 policies on the continent.
Alex Siou, a construction services engineer, was born in Hong Kong and left only in 2020 – his parents guaranteed that he would have the opportunity by obtaining a British national passport years earlier.
Sioux moved to Manchester, England, with his girlfriend after he got tired of both the working environment in Hong Kong and the political situation. He misses food, friends and family, but has no plans to return.
“I believe there is no hope because the government has absolute power,” Siou said of Hong Kong’s deteriorating political freedoms. We, the small citizens, do not have much power to oppose them or to change the situation.
Kurt Tong, a former US consul general in Hong Kong and a managing partner of consulting firm The Asia Group, said the changes reflected growing dissatisfaction in Beijing with the free semi-autonomous region. The horror deepened when some of the millions of Hong Kong residents who marched in peaceful pro-democracy protests in 2019 stormed the city’s legislative complex and at times got into violent clashes with police.
“Things that China found annoying to Hong Kong began to become more popular, and things that he found attractive in Hong Kong began to become less noticeable, and friction accumulated over time,” he said.
In early 2020, authorities launched a crackdown on political dissent, arresting dozens of activists and imprisoning them for unauthorized gatherings, despite provisions guaranteeing freedom of such gatherings under Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the city’s constitution.
John Burns, an honorary professor of politics and public administration at the University of Hong Kong, was skeptical that Beijing would ever allow Hong Kong full democracy or universal suffrage, goals set out in the Basic Law during the 1997 broadcast.
“Hong Kong would become part of the local government of an authoritarian country ruled by Lenin’s party. How can there be a parliamentary democracy of the Western type? ” Burns said in an interview.
Authorities have cracked down and taken steps to eliminate the disagreement to help restore stability after months of protests in 2019, he noted.
“But this is a fragile stability based on the imposition of the law and the arrest and imprisonment of pandemic leaders,” he said, and many in Hong Kong still support the pro-democracy movement, even if they are silent for now.
“We are in a hell of a place. Hong Kong is not part of the system and therefore cannot be traded this way (but at the same time) we are not free. We are in this hybrid middle position, “Burns added. “The party has never had to run a place like Hong Kong, so it’s learning as it goes.
Former Democratic Party chairwoman and former MP Emily Lau says she is disappointed with the changes, but not surprised. “When you are dealing with a communist regime, you should not expect anything. “Nothing should surprise you,” Lau said.
It focuses on the future of Hong Kong. The city remains different from the mainland, she said. Her friends and colleagues may be imprisoned, but she may visit them and they may choose their own lawyers, rights that are usually denied to political prisoners in China.
“I know it’s very difficult. “But I think we owe it to ourselves and to future generations to do the best we can to fight for our core values, which are human rights, democracy, the rule of law and personal safety and social justice,” he said. she.
Chan Po-in, 66, whose longtime partner and fellow pro-democracy activist Lyung Kuok-hung, better known by his nickname “Long Hair,” is serving nearly two years in prison and awaits a hearing on national security charges, he said. that pressure.
“I’ve persevered for a long time, I believe I shouldn’t give up so easily, especially in this difficult time,” Chan said. “The government and the law have given us these rights (according to the Basic Law). ”
In May, during the election of a new Hong Kong CEO, Chan and several others staged a small protest demanding universal suffrage. On June 4 this year, on the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Chan and two others stood in the street in silent protest, dressed in black and wearing white masks with black “x’s,” glued on them.
However, with heightened security ahead of Friday’s 25th anniversary celebrations, Chan sent a message to Hong Kong media that she and her group would not hold a protest.
After being summoned for a “conversation” by the state security police, they decided “we cannot hold any protest activity on this day,” she said.
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AP writer Kelvin Chan of London and news assistant Carmen Lee of Hong Kong contributed to the report.
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