Hong Kong or the dismantling of civil society

From demanding in the streets an improvement of their democratic system to the arrest of activists and opponents, and the forced dismantling of civil society organizations: in less than two years Hong Kong it has gone from being a vibrant society to seeing almost any hint of dissent censored.

Only between January and September of this year, fifty Hong Kong organizations have decided to dissolve to minimize the risks for their members of being accused of any of the assumptions of the controversial National Security Law, which came into force on June 30, 2020 and What a penalty even life imprisonment for “secession” or “conspiring with foreign forces.”

These are groups such as the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of China’s Democratic Patriotic Movements (HKA), Wall-fare (dedicated to fighting for an improvement in the living conditions of prisoners), Hong Kong Professional Teachers Union or Hong Kong Human Rights Lawyers Support Group China.

Also some of a more political nature such as Studentlocalism or Demosisto, founded among others by Joshua Wong – an activist currently imprisoned for his participation in different Hong Kong demonstrations – and which was dissolved on the same day that the aforementioned law came into force.

The latest to join this long roster is Amnesty International (AI), which will not be disbanded, but did announce today that its local headquarters will stop operate next Sunday, while the regional office will close before the end of the year.

A hostile environment

“We have decided to dissolve because the Police have requested a lot of information from us and we cannot continue working as we have done in the environment that exists now in Hong Kong,” says a source from one of the dissolved organizations, who prefers to remain anonymous to avoid further risks.

“It is a sad decision, with all the work that the association has done,” he adds.

Both the website and the social media profiles of that and other organizations have also disappeared, after months of operating under minimal conditions.

The speed at which the panorama has deteriorated is shown by cases such as that of the HKA vice president, Hang Tung Chow, who last month accepted an interview with Efe that could not be carried out since six hours after To submit the confirmation, in the early morning of September 7 to 8, the Hong Kong Police arrived at her door to take her into custody.

Days before her arrest – on September 8, accused of inciting participation in the traditional annual vigil for the Tiananmen massacre, banned since 2020 by the authorities under the pretext of the pandemic – Chow and other HKA leaders they had challenged the police requirements for information, considering that they lacked a legal basis and represented an “abuse of power”.

They also rejected the police accusation of being “a foreign agent” or of acting on behalf of foreign entities.

“In this way we show you that your (police) intimidation ends here. We are not going to help you spread fear, ”Chow said three days before his arrest, from which time he remains in custody.

Growing silence

Two other sources consulted – active in relations with the foreign press in previous years – did not respond to Efe, an increasingly common drift due to the political climate in this territory.

All this despite the fact that Beijing promised to respect the freedoms in force in 1997 and for at least fifty years by signing the Sino-British Declaration of 1984, which articulated the retrocession of part of the former metropolis, the United Kingdom.

The press has also suffered, with the case of the closure of the Apple Daily tabloid as the most notorious of all, since the authorities froze the accounts of the newspaper, owned by tycoon Jimmy Lai, currently in prison for his participation in unauthorized demonstrations.

Likewise, Lai is accused of “conspiring with foreign forces” for two schemes that have sought to achieve international sanctions against the authorities, according to information published by the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post.

In addition, with the new electoral legislation, promoted this year by Beijing, the Hong Kong opposition is also being targeted, since the already limited suffrage system has been further restricted until now, in such a way that they are minimized the options of accessing the power of non-sympathetic sectors with the guidelines of the Chinese Government.

According to the Chinese authorities, this is a way of guaranteeing that “only patriots rule Hong Kong”, although a yardstick of patriotism is applied that contemplates only the vision of the term that Beijing has.

“Unprecedented fear”

From the Hong Kong branch of the human rights organization AI, Kai Ong – a pseudonym used for security reasons – considers that the National Security Law “has caused unprecedented fear among civil society groups.”

“The law has restricted the space for civil society to act,” adds the source, “because even legitimate expressions well protected under international regulations can be seen as criminal activities in Hong Kong.”

According to the AI ​​spokesperson, “many (workers of these associations) have taken a break from their work, cut off relations with foreign partners or even dissolved out of fear of being prosecuted.”

“The recent raid shows that the authorities are trying two things: first, to silence dissent. The most important civil society groups that opposed the government are now either dissolved or under investigation, ”he says.

“The second is to try to reduce the ability of Hong Kongers to express their opposition to the government in an organized way. By forcing the dissolution of civil society groups, the authorities break the networks of this and make it difficult for those who want to gather resources to express different opinions ”.

This means, according to Kai Ong, that “there will be fewer, if any, ways for different social groups to express their concerns and opinions.”