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On Tuesday, Hong Kong authorities introduced that they’d arrested six individuals for posting “seditious” messages on social media. In line with native media studies, these arrested embrace Chow Cling-tung, a distinguished human rights lawyer who was already behind bars, and the posts in query involved the commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen Sq. bloodbath.
The Chinese language Communist Celebration’s home censorship surrounding the occasions of June 1989, when the navy crushed pro-democracy protests in Beijing and elsewhere, is well-known internationally. Its efforts have been so thorough that almost all younger individuals in China at the moment do not know that the bloodbath ever occurred, although the picture of the “Tank Man” has develop into an immediately recognizable image of resistance exterior the nation.
For 3 a long time, Hong Kong was the one place inside China the place speaking concerning the atrocity was allowed. However now the identical erasure of Tiananmen is underway within the former British colony of seven million individuals.
The latest arrests had been the Hong Kong authorities’s first software of the Safeguarding Nationwide Safety Ordinance, or Article 23, which was adopted in March by the Legislative Council. The council itself, as soon as a spot of vigorous debate, has been decreased to a rubber-stamp physique within the years since Beijing imposed its personal draconian Nationwide Safety Legislation (NSL) on the territory in July 2020. Throughout the identical interval, Hong Kong authorities have pursued a crackdown on free speech with astounding velocity and depth, all underneath the guise of “nationwide safety.”
Beijing’s willpower to crush Hong Kong’s freedoms and to erase historical past is illustrated by the a number of, years-long prosecutions towards Chow. Nevertheless, Chow’s braveness and resolve within the face of this repression exemplify Hong Kongers’ collective willpower to combat again.
Chow has been in custody since September 2021, when police arrested her for “inciting subversion” underneath the NSL. On the time, she was the vice chair of the Hong Kong Alliance in Assist of Patriotic Democratic Actions of China, which had been the organizer of the annual Tiananmen Sq. bloodbath vigil on June 4 at Victoria Park for the reason that first anniversary in 1990.
Authorities banned the vigil for the primary time in 2020, citing public well being restrictions associated to COVID-19. Regardless of the ban, 1000’s lit candles throughout Hong Kong in 2020. Smaller crowds did the identical when the ban was repeated in 2021.
In December 2021 and January 2022, Chow was sentenced to a complete of twenty-two months in jail for “participating” and “inciting others to participate” within the unauthorized vigils underneath Hong Kong’s Public Order Ordinance. In March 2023, she acquired one other four-and-a-half months for failing to offer authorities with info on the Alliance underneath the NSL.
Whereas the principle prosecution towards Chow for “inciting subversion” underneath the NSL, for which she faces as much as 10 years in jail, remains to be pending, authorities have now added the brand new cost of “sedition” underneath Article 23, which carries a most sentence of seven years.
The alleged seditious messages that “incited hatred” had been posts on a Fb web page referred to as “ChowHangTungClub.” Apparently written by Chow, they clarify how she grew to become concerned with the Alliance. Chow’s mom was one of many seven individuals arrested. The Hong Kong authorities’s merciless guilt-by-association ways are in line with a long-running apply on the mainland.
The truth that the authorities maintain throwing new expenses at Chow for the one factor she did – manage commemorations to honor these killed by their authorities for peacefully demanding freedom and democracy – solely speaks to the insecurity that she evokes in her personal authorities and in Beijing.
Whereas others arrested underneath the NSL selected to plead responsible and accepted gag orders in alternate for shorter jail sentences or bail releases, Chow refuses to be silenced even behind bars. She wrote in a 2021 letter from her cell to her supporters: “I reject [the characterization of me as] unlucky… It’s really an important fortune to have the ability to combat for one’s personal concepts. How many individuals on the earth have such a chance? In opposition to the most important communist dictatorship on the earth, no much less. What a problem.”
The final time I noticed Chow Cling-tung was in a crowded restaurant in Hong Kong on the finish of 2019, when native pro-democracy protests had been raging. I’ve forgotten what we stated to one another, however I’ll at all times keep in mind the self-assurance and serenity that radiated from somebody who knew she was doing the correct factor.
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