Group items tagged

The central government wants Hong Kong to be run by “patriots,” Mr. Xia said, and will not let the Hong Kong government rewrite the territory’s laws, as previously expected, but will do so itself.

When Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the territory was promised a high degree of autonomy, in addition to the preservation of its capitalist economic system and the rule of law.

But in the decades since, many among the city’s 7.5 million residents have grown wary of Beijing’s encroachment on their freedoms and unfulfilled promises of universal suffrage.

Collectively, those efforts are transforming Hong Kong’s freewheeling, often messy partial democracy into a political system more closely resembling mainland China’s authoritarian system, which demands almost total obedience.

Mr. Lau, a former senior Hong Kong official, said the Chinese legislature, the National People’s Congress, would probably move to create a high-level group of government officials with the legal authority to investigate every candidate for public office and determine whether each candidate is genuinely loyal to Beijing

China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, raised the issue in late January with Mrs. Lam, telling her that having patriots govern Hong Kong was the only way to ensure the city’s long-term stability.

“You cannot say, ‘I’m patriotic but I don’t respect the fact that it is the Chinese Communist Party which leads the country,’” Erick Tsang, Hong Kong’s secretary for constitutional and mainland affairs, said at a news conference.

“I can only say people worry about that — for example, whether criticism of Communist Party or the political system in China would be regarded as not patriotic, then they have this kind of self-censorship,” said Ivan Choy, a senior lecturer in government and public administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“It’s just in connection with these two major and important matters,” Mr. Chow said. “I still believe that, going forward, we still have a role to play.”

vaccine hesitancy is high.

The Economist’s normalcy index finds life in Hong Kong to be more similar to pre-pandemic times than anywhere else in the world. But restrictions are starting to chafe.

The territory reacted quickly to the spread of covid-19. The government closed the border with mainland China in February last year and banned all non-residents from entering. Laws mandate mask-wearing, the use of contact-tracing apps and testing.

With the rest of the world slowly opening up, Hong Kong is stuck in isolation. The border with China is still closed, to the frustration of many families and businesses

Vaccination rates were boosted somewhat by incentives, including prize draws for flats and Rolex watches, and within younger groups around 70-80% have had a second dose. But among the vulnerable over-80s just 13% have had two shots, leaving them at risk when Delta does arrive.

Hong Kong has offered free shots for all since April but many people opted to wait and see. Some worry about side effects; others do not trust their government which has pushed a jab produced by Sinovac, a Chinese firm, despite questions over its efficacy (Pfizer’s vaccine is also available for free).

Since September Hong Kong has allowed 2,000 people from the mainland and Macau (Hong Kong’s tiny neighbour) to enter each day without quarantine. But the offer has not been reciprocated.

Hong Kong must go further: more vaccines, better testing and longer hospital stays for recovering patients.

Giving the government in Beijing access to its data will make many Hong Kongers uncomfortable, but the dismantling of the territory’s political opposition has intimidated many people, forcing them to swallow any such grievances.

The only clear way out is through vaccinations. Hong Kong could do more to encourage its citizens to get jabbed.

Some places offer more freedoms to vaccinated citizens. For example New South Wales, an Australian state, will allow them to use gyms and visit each other’s homes.

monetary incentives have been effective at encouraging vaccination. But spending vouchers distributed to Hong Kongers this year were not linked to vaccine status.

As most of the world accepts that covid-19 will become endemic, Hong Kong will be forced to close itself off even further.

The UK’s foreign minister, Dominic Raab, was quick to criticise the move.

the decision will increase the number of seats in Hong Kong’s legislature from 70 to 90, and the election committee charged with choosing a chief executive from 1,200 to 1,500.

Li said the government would “solidify the foundations of basic research”, including by offering 100% tax deductions on R&D costs for manufacturers.

In the past year new laws and regulations in Hong Kong, including a draconian national security law and a concerted campaign of protest-related prosecutions, have resulted in almost every significant voice of opposition being in jail, on trial or in exile overseas.

The changes have drawn international condemnation. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told Congress on Wednesday that the Biden administration would “follow through on sanctions … against those responsible for committing repressive acts in Hong Kong”. The US and other countries have repeatedly objected to the crackdown with little effect.

Speaking to press after the sessions, the premier, Li Keqiang, praised the passage of the decision, and the approval of China’s 14th five-year plan, which included GDP growth targets of “above 6%” and a focus on boosting China’s tech industry.

The changes will also establish a vetting panel responsible for “reviewing and confirming the qualifications” of committee and political political candidates in line with the national security law and basic law.

Ahead of a high-level bilateral meeting in Alaska next week, Li also urged improved relations with the US, but signalled China had no intention of conceding to criticisms of its actions in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and towards Taiwan.

But the number of dolphins in Hong Kong have declined as much as 80 percent over the past 15 years, according to a report by 15 conservation groups and regional universities, as pollution, marine traffic and large-scale land reclamation projects have made the environment increasingly hostile.

The construction of a new runway for Hong Kong’s international airport and a bridge that links the city with the western side of the Pearl River has also disrupted areas that were once prime dolphin habitat but now rarely see the animals.

“If we identify individuals, we can follow their life history — where they like to hang around, whether they have calves,” he said. “This is important, because one of the worries is reproductive rate of dolphins is quite low. To keep the population healthy, we want to see calves. But that’s not happening in Hong Kong.”

“All vessel traffic is an issue, but high-speed ferries are a particular issue,” said Laurence McCook, the head of oceans conservation for the WWF-Hong Kong. “They move so fast there’s a risk of vessel strike, but they also just physically disturb the dolphins because the dolphins run away from them.”

“People want to hear this news about the benefit of the pandemic for wildlife, but it’s not true for dolphins,” said Vincent Ho, the vice chairman of the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society.

“Every time we have a project like the bridge,” Mr. Ho said, “they set up a marine park as some kind of compensation. But we think it’s too late.”

“What we have documented fairly clearly is that dolphins are moving back out into the ferry zone,” Mr. McCook said. “That actually is their most prime habitat under current circumstances.”

Conservation groups say they hope the benefits of the ferry suspension will encourage regional governments and ferry companies to reconsider routes across the Pearl River. By traveling somewhat farther south, they could bypass key areas of dolphin habitat along Lantau, Hong Kong’s largest island.

“Rerouting the ferries is not a magic cure-all,” Mr. McCook said. “But we think that can help us catalyze other actions and demonstrate it’s not a fait accompli that we lose the dolphins.”

The effective barring of Roth from entering Hong Kong is not an isolated incident, happening days after a U.S. photographer covering the pro-democracy protests was also banned from entering the financial hub.

“I think it’s worth stressing that what happened to me pales in comparison to what is happening to the pro-democracy protesters on the streets of Hong Kong. They’re the ones who are facing tear gas, beatings and arrest, and I just had another 16 hour flight [back to New York],” Roth says. “But what it does reflect is a real worsening of the human rights situation in Hong Kong.”

At a press briefing on Monday after the incident involving Roth, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said that “allowing or not allowing someone’s entry is China’s sovereign right,” adding that foreign NGOs were supporting “Hong Kong independence separatist activities.”

“The justification they put forward was laughable, and insulting to the people of Hong Kong,” says Roth. “They don’t need me to tell them to take to the streets — they are looking to defend their own human rights, their own political freedoms and their own rule of law.”

Roth says Beijing’s explanation for barring him shows how fearful the authorities are of demonstrations in the city, and is an attempt to persuade those in the mainland not to emulate the pro-democracy protests. “They simply cannot admit to people on the mainland that hundreds of thousands Chinese citizens would take to the street in opposition to the increasingly dictatorial rule that is coming from Beijing.”

The Chinese government has attempted to deter, track and deport journalists and foreign investigators from reporting on forced indoctrination and detention of at least a million Uighur Muslims in internment camps in China’s western province of Xinjiang, highlighted in Roth’s lead essay in the HRW report.

On Monday, Chinese state media reported that the semi-autonomous region of Tibet would introduce forthcoming regulations to “strengthen ethnic unity;” echoing language used in regulations introduced in Xinjiang four years ago.

Beyond the worrying crackdown within China’s own borders, HRW’s report highlights Beijing’s efforts to deter the international community from scrutinizing its human rights abuses, taking “full advantage of the corporate quest for profit to extend its censorship to critics abroad.”

And at the individual level, the export of censorship is reaching dissidents and even universities in Australia, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S.; the report notes that students from China who wanted to join campus debates felt unable to do so for fear of being monitored or reported to Chinese authorities.

The export of the Chinese censorship system also permeates governments and international institutions, and has “transformed into an active assault on the international human rights system,”

China has also consistently worked with Russia at the U.N. Security Council to block efforts to investigate human rights abuses in Syria, Myanmar and Venezuela. “China worries that even enforcement of human rights standards someplace else will have a boomerang effect that will come back to haunt it,” says Roth.

Aside from China, the report also looks at several other concerning situations around around the world, including civilians at risk from indiscriminate bombing in Idlib province in Syria, the desperate humanitarian crisis resulting from Saudi-led coalition’s actions in Yemen, the refugee crisis emerging from Maduro’s grip on power in Venezuela, and Myanmar’s denial of the genocide of the Rohingya at the International Court of Justice. And while Roth is encouraged by a growing international response to China’s actions in Xinjiang, particularly from Muslim majority nations, there remains much more to be done. From a U.S. perspective, the report notes that strong rhetoric from officials condemning human rights violations in China is “often undercut by Trump’s praise of Xi Jinping and other friendly autocrats,” as well as the Trump-administration’s own policies in violation of human rights, including forced separation at the U.S.-Mexican border.

China's foreign ministry accused the UK of having a colonial mentality with its historical link to Hong Hong stemming from "aggressive and unequal treaties".

'Time is running out'

Hong Kong has been rocked by months of enormous and often violent pro-democracy protests over the past year.

Beijing announced plans to introduce a sweeping national security law covering secession, subversion of state power, terrorism and foreign interference.

But opponents, including many Western nations, fear it will bring mainland-style political oppression to a business hub that was supposedly guaranteed freedoms and autonomy for 50 years after its 1997 handover to China from the British Empire.

In Parliament on Tuesday, UK Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said he had reached out to Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada about contingency plans if the law creates a deluge of Hong Kongers looking to leave.

We encourage more Hong Kongers to join this global petition and wish more European leaders could stand with Hong Kong," Wong said. "Hong Kong is already under threat, and time is running out in this global city."

Not only has the attempted overreach roused the people of Hong Kong; their example will be noted in Shanghai, Shenzhen and even Beijing itself. Moreover, years of progress toward the party’s cherished goal of the reabsorption of Taiwan has been derailed. Everywhere, people who might have resigned themselves to dictatorship now realize that liberty has more support than they had dared to hope.

“one document explicitly states that the purpose of the pervasive digital surveillance is ‘to prevent problems before they happen’ — in other words, to calculate who might rebel and detain them before they have a chance.”

“There’s no other place in the world where a computer can send you to an internment camp.”

The legislation approved by Congress this week would impose sanctions on Chinese officials who commit human rights abuses in the semiautonomous island territory and place Hong Kong’s special economic status under greater scrutiny.

Security forces in Hong Kong have escalated their crackdown on pro-democracy protesters this month, prompting Congress to approve a Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act it had been considering for months.

Mr. Trump said that the protests were a complicating factor in his trade negotiations with Beijing, which have stalled ahead of an important Dec. 15 deadline, when Mr. Trump must decide whether to issue yet more tariffs on Chinese goods.

he also took credit for the fact that China had not extinguished the protests with a sweeping and violent crackdown.

Mr. Trump and other administration officials have warned that an overwhelming Chinese response would have wider repercussions in the relationship between China and Beijing, including in the trade talks.But analysts say there are many reasons China’s government has refrained from an all-out violent crackdown like the one that snuffed pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989. They include the risk of an enormous international backlash and lasting damage to Hong Kong’s powerhouse economy.

Congress passed its Hong Kong bill with an overwhelming majority, meaning that it could probably override a presidential veto easily, the first override of his presidency. Mr. Trump could also choose not to sign the bill without vetoing it, in which case it would also become law.

The 10 charged are accused of illegal border crossing, which carries a one-year sentence. Two of the 10 are also accused of organizing the attempted escape and are potentially facing longer prison terms.

A group of foreign diplomats attempted to attend the hearing but weren’t allowed inside.

he U.S. State Department called on China to release them immediately and allow them to leave the country. “Their so-called crime was to flee tyranny,” the State Department said.

they haven’t been allowed to meet with the attorneys hired by their families. The families say they haven’t been able to meet with their relatives since they were taken from the boat

they called the trial secretive and politically motivated.

“The officially assigned lawyers dodged my questions,” said Chan Lok-yin, mother of another defendant, Li Tsz-yin. “How much longer do I need to wait until I could see him?”

some of the detained activists sent handwritten letters to their families saying they had been treated well.

Beatrice Li, his sister, said she believed her brother was coerced into writing the letter.

The Hong Kong police said the 12 activists each paid tens of thousands of Hong Kong dollars to be smuggled out.

Families said they were notified about the trial three days ago, making it impossible for them to attend under the current coronavirus restrictions, which would require them to be quarantined for two weeks after entering the mainland.

“None of the families know what happened at the Yantian court,”

“A public hearing is one that the outside world knows about.”

Some student groups decided this year not to attend the main vigil and to organize their own events. At the University of Hong Kong, hundreds of people, mostly student, gathered on a campus for a more sedate affair that mostly involved discussions on democracy and autonomy of Hong Kong.

“Our strategy is to link the two things, so people can see that democracy in Hong Kong and in China are part of the same resistance,” said Lee Cheuk-Yan, former chairman of the Alliance in an interview before the vigil. “The two fights are the same fight”.

where they burned Communist flags as well as cardboard drawings of Hong Kong officials.

The commemorations this year take place amid a backdrop of an intensifying crackdown on civil society in mainland China

At the Hong Kong vigil, organizers made special mention of th

e more than 200 people on the mainland who were arrested for voicing support for the Occupy protests, with dozens still in jail. In the run-up to June 4, a group of mothers of those who died in 1989 said that surveillance had worsened this year, with authorities going further than just tapping their phones and installing bugging devices in their homes.

The most prominent leaders of what became known as the Umbrella Movement or Occupy Central were jailed, and their legions of young supporters were left bitterly disenchanted.

the extradition fight, he added, is “a matter of life and death.”

young people in Hong Kong feel less affinity with mainland China and are more likely to see themselves as having a distinct Hong Kong — as opposed to Chinese — identity. Beijing’s efforts to grapple with this have backfired; when officials tried to impose a patriotic education curriculum in schools in 2012, young people led the protests against it.

Who’s going to be quite so willing, openly, to take six years of jail as the prize for the protests?” said Claudia Mo, a pro-democracy Hong Kong lawmaker, referring to a sentence handed down last year to Edward Leung, a local activist, for his role in a 2016 clash between protesters and the police.

“They came out not for personal interests but for the greater ideal of Hong Kong,” said Ms. Wong. “A good mother shall listen to her own child, and apparently Carrie Lam refuses to do so.”

“Fear is striking in all of our hearts,” said Mr. Leung, the student union president, referring to the possibility of being prosecuted

Analysts say that if demonstrations descend into violence, the authorities would have an easy excuse to prosecute young protesters, discredit them as radicals or attack them with a vengeance.

“Sometimes I think to myself, is it because I have not done enough? What else could have been done?” said So Hiu-ching, a 16-year-old high schooler who attended a student strike at a park near government offices on Monday morning.“I go home and cry,” she said, “but after that, I have to get up and try to rally more people.”

At stake is the hugely sensitive issue of Taiwan’s status. Beijing regards the island as a renegade province; self-governing Taiwan sees itself as a sovereign nation.

If Hong Kong were to allow Taiwanese law enforcement officials to land and take custody of Chan, it could be seen as a de facto extradition agreement with a foreign power, and thus a tacit recognition that Taiwan is not part of the ‘One China’ that Beijing insists it is.

A series of peaceful mass marches beginning in June morphed into frequent, violent protests, with protesters now calling for greater political freedom and repudiating Beijing’s sovereignty over the former British colony. The extradition bill is expected to be formally withdrawn by the city’s legislature on Wednesday.

The protesters are seeking fully democratic elections for the city’s leader in 2017.

“The United States supports universal suffrage in Hong Kong in accordance with the Basic Law,” Mr. Earnest said. “And we support the aspirations of the Hong Kong people.”

Police held the protesters back with water cannon, baton charges and volleys of pepper spray, leaving some unconscious and bleeding, others temporarily blind. Altogether, at least 40 people were arrested and 40 were hospitalised.

Since the law has been enacted in June, around 100 people have been arrested, including China critic and media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who was denied bail and is in detention awaiting trial.

The law, implemented in Hong Kong by China last year, criminalises secession and subversion. Earlier this month, Beijing overhauled the territory's electoral rules to ensure more loyalty to the mainland

Earlier this week, Mr Lai's Apple Daily newspaper published a handwritten letter by him, sent from prison, which read: "It is our responsibility as journalists to seek justice. As long as we are not blinded by unjust temptations, as long as we do not let evil get its way through us, we are fulfilling our responsibility."

VideoHong

The sentencing is part of a series of trials all relating to the large-scale pro-democracy protests two years ago.

Britain handed back Hong Kong to China in 1997, and the Basic Law was created under the handover agreement under the "one country, two systems" principle.

This is supposed to protect certain freedoms for Hong Kong: freedom of assembly and speech, an independent judiciary and some democratic rights - freedoms that no other part of mainland China has.

But fears that this model was being eroded led to huge pro-democracy protests in 2019.

“We want to show the Chinese Communist Party that Hong Kong people can be economically self-sufficient through the yellow economic circle,” Mr. Liu said. “We want to put pressure on blue shops to close.”

months of unrest, along with the trade war between the United States and China, have battered Hong Kong’s economy, which entered recession last year.

As tempers have flared, businesses on both sides of the color divide have been attacked.

The battle has gone online, too. Ken Leung helped create WhatsGap, a popular app in Hong Kong that maps businesses that are considered yellow, helping them draw customers.

The bill — which would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be sent to mainland China to stand trial — has been withdrawn, but the protests have continued for more than seven months, centered around demands for voting rights and an independent inquiry into police conduct.

The months of unrest have sent the financial hub’s economy reeling, as shops have shuttered during clashes and tourists have stayed away. Hong Kong police gave approval for Sunday’s rally, but not for a march that organizers had also planned. The march didn’t happen, and the protest was curtailed by clashes after police ordered an end to the rally hours before the pre-approved finishing time.

Several young protesters were handcuffed outside the park, as officers made arrests and conducted searches into the evening. One man who refused to be searched retreated into a public restroom that was promptly surrounded by riot police.

In Hong Kong, an annual candlelight vigil that has been held in the city’s Victoria Park for three decades usually draws tens of thousands of people.

But police said this week a mass gathering would pose a threat to public health just as the city reported its first locally transmitted coronavirus cases in weeks.

One student said his parents would not allow him to attend any public gatherings, but he intended to join the online vigil.

“I think we have to restore the truth,” the 15-year-old, who only gave his surname as Ho due to the sensitivity of the matter, told Reuters.

Democratically-ruled and Chinese-claimed Taiwan, where commemorations are planned throughout the day, called on China on Wednesday to apologise, a call dismissed by China’s foreign ministry as “nonsense.”

The U.S. State Department said it mourned the victims, adding “we stand with the people of China who continue to aspire to a government that protects human rights, fundamental 2ffreedoms, and basic human dignity.”

With social distancing measures allowing for religious gatherings under certain conditions, others planned to attend churches and temples. Residents were also expected to lay flowers along a waterfront promenade, while some artists planned to stage short street theatre plays.