Chinese regime uses British colonial laws against pro-democracy activists
Thursday, 18 March 2010.
Crackdown on pan-democrats ahead of 16 May “referendum” must be met by a storm of protest
Dikang, chinaworker.info
The charge of “unlawful assembly” carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. This is the threat now hanging over six prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activists facing trumped up charges linked to a December demonstration in defence of jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. This political attack by the Hong Kong state, on orders from Beijing, only confirms that the prospect of democracy for Hong Kong is shifting further away rather than drawing closer. This will be the case as long as Beijing’s autocrats and Hong Kong’s billionaire elite are calling the shots. The six pan-democrats include socialist legislature candidate “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, and trade union leader Lee Cheuk-yan, who is a vice chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, the umbrella group that each year stages a massive commemoration rally for the “4 June massacre” in Beijing 1989.
Also charged is Richard Tsoi Yiu-cheong another vice-chairman of the Alliance. Of the six arrested last week (11 March), five are standing committee members of the Alliance. This is the first time this body, an institution in Hong Kong, has faced such an attack from the state. Previously, while they frowned on its – mostly symbolic – activities, the territory’s government excluded the Alliance from direct censorship or attack. This has now changed. At the Eastern Law Court in Hong Kong on 18 March the six entered pleas of “not guilty” and announced plans for a protest demonstration on 18 April. The trial is set to commence on 22 April.
The six are charged with unlawful assembly over a protest outside Beijing’s headquarters in Hong Kong, the Liaison Office, on 25 December, in response to the jailing of dissident Liu Xiaobo in Beijing on that day. Most commentators, including veteran political figure and founder of the Democratic Party, Martin Lee Chu-ming, are adamant that the Beijing regime ordered these arrests rather than the increasingly marginalised Hong Kong administration of Donald Tsang. This is Beijing’s hard-line response to the growing demands for democratic rights in the Special Administrative Region and also to protests against the crackdown inside China.
Trade unionist Lee Cheuk-yan said, “They chose to arrest me now [i.e. more two months after the alleged ‘offence’]. It shows that Hong Kong is fading from its original colour and is being ‘mainlandised’. This is also a warning to Hong Kong people that the city is no longer what it used to be.”
Ironically, while claiming their system is superior to “Western democracy”, China’s one-party dictatorship is taking advantage of a British colonial law to persecute the six. This law is similar to draconian anti-democratic laws used against opposition and workers’ protests in Malaysia and other former British colonies. The Beijing regime likes to say it has “liberated” Hong Kong from colonialism, while “recycling” the same unjust and repressive laws.
16 May byelections
The situation in Hong Kong is full of ironies. The coming byelections in May, forced by the resignation of five members of the rubber-stamp legislature including “Long Hair”, are an attempt to clear the blockage of the Chinese regime’s continual stalling on the issue of one-person-one-vote. This electoral initiative, exploiting Hong Kong’s limited democratic loopholes, seeks to mobilise mass pressure behind the demand for universal suffrage. Beijing wants to preserve the archaic and undemocratic electoral system designed by the British. Rather than admit this outright, it repeats ad nauseum that it wants “gradual and orderly” change towards a more democratic system. In practise, the democratisation of Hong Kong’s political system is stuck or actually going backwards!
A section of the pan-democrats in Hong Kong (the generic name for those groups campaigning for universal suffrage) has been desperately trying to start negotiations with the Chinese regime. These “moderates”, led by the Democratic Party, say they are prepared to vote for the Hong Kong government’s current and far from democratic electoral reforms in return for talks with Beijing and a “verbal assurance” that universal suffrage will be introduced for later elections – in 2017 and 2020. Instead of offering talks, however, Beijing is offering the whip of counter-revolution. As Karl Marx explained, however, this can act as a spur to “revolution” or in Hong Kong’s current situation at least a powerful spur to the mass democracy struggle. The attack on the Alliance, which these arrests signify, is an attack not just on the “radicals” (the LSD and Civic Party – spearheading the “referendum” campaign) but also on the compromise wing of Hong Kong’s pan-democrats.
On its website the Alliance has slammed the arrests as “political persecution”. It has added an extra demand to the coming 4 June annual torchlight vigil, to “protest against political persecution”. The Alliance has now also called for a big protest on 18 April to mobilise against this attack, which unless defeated could be the beginning of an ominous crackdown.
The Beijing regime’s “zero tolerance” policy is spreading to Hong Kong. This is what the arrests signify. Not only are May’s byelections “illegal” according to regime spokesmen, but protests in support of Liu and other dissidents are now also illegal. Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” formula is being brushed aside by Beijing’s dictators with barely a second thought. This situation calls for a vigorous response from all those forces that stand for democratic rights. Socialists have always warned that democratic rights are not protected by constitutions, legal documents or pieces of paper, but in the final analysis by mass pressure and readiness to fight for these rights. Socialists and the supporters of the CWI (Committee for a Workers’ International) will play our part in this struggle. We do not plead any “special case” for Hong Kong, but stand for democratic rights – the right to organise, to demonstrate, to strike etc. – throughout China. We call for an end to one-party rule. We also explain that real democratic rights cannot be achieved in Hong Kong while a handful of billionaires control its economy – not without a democratic socialist transformation of society in other words.
International solidarity
CWI members and parties around the world have responded to the crackdown in Hong Kong by dispatching protest letters to the office of the Chief Executive Donald Tsang. Copies of protest letters have been received by chinaworker.info from Australia, Belgium, Britain, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Ireland and Sweden, as well as from the CWI internationally. In a copy of a letter obtained by chinaworker.info, Tsang’s office has replied to the Socialist Party in Australia, denying the arrests are politically motivated. It claims the government is “committed to protecting the right of assembly, of procession and of demonstration of the people of Hong Kong in accordance with the laws of Hong Kong.” This statement can only provoke howls of laughter. Under orders from its bosses in Beijing, the Hong Kong government attacks the right of assembly while claiming it is “protecting” this right.
Chinaworker.info would like to thank those who have already sent protest letters and urge others to follow suit by using the model letter below.
Send to: Chief Executive, Sir Donald Tsang,
Government House, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
E-mail: ceo@ceo.gov.hk
Fax: (852) 2509 0577
Dikang, chinaworker.info
The charge of “unlawful assembly” carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. This is the threat now hanging over six prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activists facing trumped up charges linked to a December demonstration in defence of jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. This political attack by the Hong Kong state, on orders from Beijing, only confirms that the prospect of democracy for Hong Kong is shifting further away rather than drawing closer. This will be the case as long as Beijing’s autocrats and Hong Kong’s billionaire elite are calling the shots. The six pan-democrats include socialist legislature candidate “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, and trade union leader Lee Cheuk-yan, who is a vice chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, the umbrella group that each year stages a massive commemoration rally for the “4 June massacre” in Beijing 1989.
Also charged is Richard Tsoi Yiu-cheong another vice-chairman of the Alliance. Of the six arrested last week (11 March), five are standing committee members of the Alliance. This is the first time this body, an institution in Hong Kong, has faced such an attack from the state. Previously, while they frowned on its – mostly symbolic – activities, the territory’s government excluded the Alliance from direct censorship or attack. This has now changed. At the Eastern Law Court in Hong Kong on 18 March the six entered pleas of “not guilty” and announced plans for a protest demonstration on 18 April. The trial is set to commence on 22 April.
The six are charged with unlawful assembly over a protest outside Beijing’s headquarters in Hong Kong, the Liaison Office, on 25 December, in response to the jailing of dissident Liu Xiaobo in Beijing on that day. Most commentators, including veteran political figure and founder of the Democratic Party, Martin Lee Chu-ming, are adamant that the Beijing regime ordered these arrests rather than the increasingly marginalised Hong Kong administration of Donald Tsang. This is Beijing’s hard-line response to the growing demands for democratic rights in the Special Administrative Region and also to protests against the crackdown inside China.
Trade unionist Lee Cheuk-yan said, “They chose to arrest me now [i.e. more two months after the alleged ‘offence’]. It shows that Hong Kong is fading from its original colour and is being ‘mainlandised’. This is also a warning to Hong Kong people that the city is no longer what it used to be.”
Ironically, while claiming their system is superior to “Western democracy”, China’s one-party dictatorship is taking advantage of a British colonial law to persecute the six. This law is similar to draconian anti-democratic laws used against opposition and workers’ protests in Malaysia and other former British colonies. The Beijing regime likes to say it has “liberated” Hong Kong from colonialism, while “recycling” the same unjust and repressive laws.
16 May byelections
The situation in Hong Kong is full of ironies. The coming byelections in May, forced by the resignation of five members of the rubber-stamp legislature including “Long Hair”, are an attempt to clear the blockage of the Chinese regime’s continual stalling on the issue of one-person-one-vote. This electoral initiative, exploiting Hong Kong’s limited democratic loopholes, seeks to mobilise mass pressure behind the demand for universal suffrage. Beijing wants to preserve the archaic and undemocratic electoral system designed by the British. Rather than admit this outright, it repeats ad nauseum that it wants “gradual and orderly” change towards a more democratic system. In practise, the democratisation of Hong Kong’s political system is stuck or actually going backwards!
A section of the pan-democrats in Hong Kong (the generic name for those groups campaigning for universal suffrage) has been desperately trying to start negotiations with the Chinese regime. These “moderates”, led by the Democratic Party, say they are prepared to vote for the Hong Kong government’s current and far from democratic electoral reforms in return for talks with Beijing and a “verbal assurance” that universal suffrage will be introduced for later elections – in 2017 and 2020. Instead of offering talks, however, Beijing is offering the whip of counter-revolution. As Karl Marx explained, however, this can act as a spur to “revolution” or in Hong Kong’s current situation at least a powerful spur to the mass democracy struggle. The attack on the Alliance, which these arrests signify, is an attack not just on the “radicals” (the LSD and Civic Party – spearheading the “referendum” campaign) but also on the compromise wing of Hong Kong’s pan-democrats.
On its website the Alliance has slammed the arrests as “political persecution”. It has added an extra demand to the coming 4 June annual torchlight vigil, to “protest against political persecution”. The Alliance has now also called for a big protest on 18 April to mobilise against this attack, which unless defeated could be the beginning of an ominous crackdown.
The Beijing regime’s “zero tolerance” policy is spreading to Hong Kong. This is what the arrests signify. Not only are May’s byelections “illegal” according to regime spokesmen, but protests in support of Liu and other dissidents are now also illegal. Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” formula is being brushed aside by Beijing’s dictators with barely a second thought. This situation calls for a vigorous response from all those forces that stand for democratic rights. Socialists have always warned that democratic rights are not protected by constitutions, legal documents or pieces of paper, but in the final analysis by mass pressure and readiness to fight for these rights. Socialists and the supporters of the CWI (Committee for a Workers’ International) will play our part in this struggle. We do not plead any “special case” for Hong Kong, but stand for democratic rights – the right to organise, to demonstrate, to strike etc. – throughout China. We call for an end to one-party rule. We also explain that real democratic rights cannot be achieved in Hong Kong while a handful of billionaires control its economy – not without a democratic socialist transformation of society in other words.
International solidarity
CWI members and parties around the world have responded to the crackdown in Hong Kong by dispatching protest letters to the office of the Chief Executive Donald Tsang. Copies of protest letters have been received by chinaworker.info from Australia, Belgium, Britain, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Ireland and Sweden, as well as from the CWI internationally. In a copy of a letter obtained by chinaworker.info, Tsang’s office has replied to the Socialist Party in Australia, denying the arrests are politically motivated. It claims the government is “committed to protecting the right of assembly, of procession and of demonstration of the people of Hong Kong in accordance with the laws of Hong Kong.” This statement can only provoke howls of laughter. Under orders from its bosses in Beijing, the Hong Kong government attacks the right of assembly while claiming it is “protecting” this right.
Chinaworker.info would like to thank those who have already sent protest letters and urge others to follow suit by using the model letter below.
Send to: Chief Executive, Sir Donald Tsang,
Government House, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
E-mail: ceo@ceo.gov.hk
Fax: (852) 2509 0577
Send to: Secretary for Justice, Wong Yan Lung,
4th Floor, High Block, QGO
E-mail: dojinfo@doj.gov.hk
Fax: (852) 2869 0720
Send copies to: chinaworker.info@gmail.com
[Please note: PRC citizens should not to use real name/address when responding to this appeal].
| Dear Chief Executive Donald Tsang, I am writing to you to protest over the arrest of Legislative Council candidate Leung Kwok-hung, trade union leader Lee Cheuk-yan (General Secretary of HKCTU), and other pro-democracy campaigners who are charged with participating in an “unlawful assembly” on 25 December 2009. That demonstration was against the 11-year prison sentence imposed on Liu Xiaobo, author of Charter 08, by a Beijing court on the same day. The Hong Kong arrests appear to be a politically inspired action by the Hong Kong police at a time when the territory is debating election reforms and facing byelections. These arrests also coincide with growing unease over a marked increase in governmental repression against dissidents in China, an unease that has only been heightened by the harsh punishment of Liu Xiaobo. It seems that China’s crackdown on dissent is now being extended to Hong Kong. How else can one interpret these arrests – two months after the event – of prominent public figures for showing solidarity with imprisoned Chinese dissidents? |
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