The Press in Hong Kong | Where democracy agonizes in silence

Once a haven of freedom at the gates of China, Hong Kong has been subjected to violent repression by Beijing since 2020. The verdict of the trial of 47 pro-democracy activists, expected for the end of the summer, should confirm the trend. For the few militants still free, the choice now comes down to a clandestine struggle or exile.

Protesters threatened with extinction

For two years, the life of Chan Poying, 67, has been summed up in one verb: wait.

Waiting to be released by the police after she was briefly detained on the sidelines of a demonstration in memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4. Wait for a response from the banks, which are closing one after another the accounts of the League of Social Democrats, his political party. But above all, to wait for news of her husband, Leung Kwok-hung, imprisoned by the Hong Kong authorities for almost 18 months. The man is a local opposition figure. A tireless activist for the establishment of direct universal suffrage in Hong Kong, a pillar of the “umbrella revolution” of 2014, he was arrested in January 2021 along with 46 other democratic activists.

Their crime: having participated, a few months earlier, in the primary of the pro-democracy camp for the legislative elections. Their trial began in February, and the verdicts are expected by the end of the summer. That of Leung Kwok-hung could be particularly severe, because like 16 other of his fellow prisoners, he refused to plead guilty. They face up to 10 years in prison each.

It is in the half-light of a shed which has recently served as his office that Chan Poying meets The Press. A few weeks ago, the owner of the old party premises evicted her unceremoniously.

Submission

Three years after bringing nearly 2 million protesters to the streets, Hong Kong’s Democrats are facing extinction. The Chinese Communist Party has accelerated the assimilation of the city to the rest of the country by means of a national security law imposed in the summer of 2020. The text, whose measures as vague as draconian have been denounced by the UN, has made it possible to carry out an impressive sweep: a hundred opponents imprisoned or threatened with imprisonment, political parties stifled, unions muzzled and foreign NGOs expelled. The Pearl of the Orient, returned to China by the British in 1997, was to be able to maintain its own political system for half a century.

It will have been submitted a generation in advance.

“Our freedoms of expression and association have completely gone up in smoke,” confirms, on condition of anonymity, the president of a major Hong Kong opposition party. We don’t even dare to coordinate with the other allied parties, at the risk of being accused of subversion. Our only goal now is to understand where the red line is in order to escape repression. »

Like political parties, the media have been a priority target of repression. Hong Kong’s two main pro-democracy newspapers, Apple Daily And Booth Newswere closed in 2021.

Tycoon Jimmy Lai, founder ofApple Daily, was sentenced in December to nearly five years in prison. Thirteen journalists are behind bars today.

Dangerous bus schedules

The lowest echelons of power were not spared. In universities, student organizations suspected of being hostile to Beijing have been systematically disbanded. In the neighborhoods, the “district councils”, responsible for bus timetables or garbage collection, have just been brought into line. According to a Hong Kong executive decision made public on May 2, only 20% of seats will now be put to the popular vote, compared to 90% previously. The overwhelming majority of councilors will in future be directly appointed by the central government. The authorities will also be able to disqualify any candidate deemed “unpatriotic”. The Legislative Council, the city’s main body of power, had already suffered a similar fate in 2021.

“We never imagined that this security law would go so far,” said Debbie Chan, 32, elected to the district council of the Sai Kung district in 2019.

“Then in 2022, elected neighborhood officials began to receive threatening emails and it is becoming increasingly difficult to be reimbursed for their mandate expenses. Like many of my colleagues, I finally decided to quit. With sparkling eyes behind huge round glasses, the young woman showed around the small store she had recently opened. There are small jewels, works of art, clothing and pottery. All items were hand-produced by like-minded Hong Kongers.

Refugees in books

The vocation of bookseller, in particular, has the wind in its sails. “Hong Kong has never seen so many liberal bookstores. They constitute one of the last spaces of freedom and allow us to maintain a physical link between us”, explains Sum Wan, former journalist of Booth News having opened a small bookstore between two skyscrapers in the Kowloon district. On the shelves, books trace the history of Hong Kong, recount the 2019 uprising and praise democracy.

“The national security law is worded in such general terms that the slightest of these books could get me arrested,” said Wayne Mak, 27, another aspiring bookseller living nearby. “But I’m not afraid. Let the police come. »

The man is in great danger of being taken at his word. Twenty-four hours later, six people, including a pastor, were arrested by the police on the stand of a book fair, guilty, according to the authorities, of having “produced and sold a book calling for the independence of Hong Kong”.

Will we soon see book burnings in the heart of one of the hubs of world trade? Tiger, a Chinese dissident journalist who has lived in Hong Kong for twenty years, is concerned in any case about the consequences of the repression on the ability of Chinese opponents to organize themselves. “For decades, this city was the rear base of the Chinese democrats. It relayed works banned on the continent. Human rights activists worked there in relative serenity. This era is over, he lets go before taking off for Japan, where he will try to rebuild his life. »

Driven into exile

Some 200,000 Hong Kongers have fled since the introduction of the national security law, mainly to the United Kingdom, but also to Canada, another refuge of choice.

The number of long-stay visas granted by Ottawa to Hong Kongers has more than doubled between 2020 and 2021, rising from around 1,500 permanent residence permits to more than 3,000. The numbers of study and temporary residence permits have seen a similar trend. Some 30,000 Hong Kongers have also settled on the island of Taiwan, barely an hour’s flight from Hong Kong.

This is the case of Terrence Law, a 23-year-old student. When his student union was dissolved by the authorities in 2021, he chose to continue campaigning with a group of friends. “We thought that resisting the margins was still possible and therefore raised funds to help activists prosecuted,” he says from a cafe in Taipei, the Taiwanese capital.

In 10 days, the young activist liquidated everything he owned and bought a one-way ticket to Taipei. “At the time of crossing the border, at the airport, I was terrified. I thought I’d be arrested, he resumes, his eyes lost in space. But when I was let through, at passport control, a feeling of sadness overwhelmed me. I was free, of course, but I was going to leave my city, perhaps forever. Then the plane took off. It was night, Hong Kong sparkled with a thousand lights. I had never seen anything so beautiful. I cried the whole flight. » Overwhelmed by emotion, he pauses quickly. Then he continues. “As long as the Chinese Communist Party remains in power, returning to Hong Kong will be impossible,” he sobbed. Some Chinese dissidents exiled abroad have warned me that my hair may be gray the day I return home. It will take as long as it takes. Hong Kong will be free, and I will return home. Lurking in the maze of Hong Kong’s urban canyons or on the shores of the Taiwan Strait, the heart of Hong Kong freedom is beating weaker than ever. But it still beats.