Hong Kong's banned lawmakers aren't backing down

By James Griffiths

Hong Kong -- Yau Wai-ching and Sixtus "Baggio" Leung would be forgiven for feeling a little shell shocked.
They've gone from being stars of Hong Kong's nascent independence movement, to public enemy number one, criticized in newspapers and on television, and harassed online.
In September, the pair were elected to Hong Kong's parliament, LegCo, where they joined a raft of other young lawmakers favoring greater autonomy for the city or even independence from China.
"When we were elected, our battle between the people and government was just starting," Yau, a 25-year-old former community worker, told CNN.
That battle has escalated far quicker than anyone could imagine. 

On November 2, Yau and Leung were dragged from LegCo by security guards as they found themselves at the center of a legal battle that threatens to undermine the city's already shaky political system.

Oathgate

The saga began as lawmakers were taking their oaths of office last month. 

While pro-democracy politicians have used the ceremony as a venue for protest in the past, Yau and Leung took it a step further.
They swore and insulted China and displayed flags with the words "Hong Kong is not China," leading to their oaths being rejected, along with several other lawmakers who flubbed their vows.
The pair were due to retake their oaths properly the following week when everything got a lot more complicated. 

Hong Kong government officials sued to prevent them being sworn-in again, arguing they had forgone their opportunity.
Before the court could rule, Beijing too waded in, using a rarely-used power to re-interpret Hong Kong's constitution.

Sixtus "Baggio" Leung and Yau Wai-ching speak to CNN.

Yau and Leung could not retake their oaths, and would not become lawmakers, Beijing said. 

This was later backed up by a Hong Kong court, though the pair are appealing.
"We were elected by over 50,000 voters," Leung said, adding that he was fighting to "protect our system and the separation of powers and the rule of law."
Yau defended the pair's protest as a tradition, pointing to occasions in the past where other lawmakers used the oath-taking session "for a performance or chance to show their ideologies."
Displaying the flags was just a statement of fact, Leung added, "Hong Kong is not China."
They would not comment on the content of their oaths, due to the ongoing appeal.

What's at stake?

Beijing's ruling came as a shock to much of Hong Kong.
Last week, wearing black and led by a marshal holding a black umbrella, more than 2,000 lawyers marched on the city's top court, in a silent demonstration against what they saw was a blow to the city's judicial autonomy.
"This is treachery on behalf of the (Chinese government) to the Hong Kong people. How can they ever trust them again?" said Alan Leong, a former barrister and co-founder of the pro-democracy Civic Party, adding that Beijing's ruling was "completely unnecessary."
The fear is that Beijing's interpretation, which requires officials to pledge allegiance to Hong Kong as an inalienable part of China, will undermine judicial independence and the "one country, two systems" principle under which the city is governed.
"By preventing the two pro-independence politicians from taking office, the Chinese government has opened the door to disqualify anyone from Hong Kong's government if they are determined to not be loyal to Beijing," pro-democrat lawmaker Claudia Mo wrote in an op-ed after the ruling.
Some fear that Beijing is also indicating a willingness to change the constitution at will. 

Before the most recent interpretation, the power had only been used four times in the past 19 years.

Yau Wai-ching holds a court ruling as she leaves the High Court in Hong Kong on November 15, 2016.

Why did Beijing act?

The oath-taking saga comes amid increasing support in Hong Kong for independence from China, which has caused concern and outrage in Beijing.
In the run-up to the LegCo elections in September, several pro-independence candidates were banned from taking part, including Edward Leung (no relation to Baggio), then the city's most famous separatist politician.
Yau and Leung's actions "hit the bottom line of the 'one country, two systems' principle and posed a grave threat to national sovereignty and security," China's top lawmaking body said in a statement this month.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said last week that "pro-independence forces in Hong Kong want to split the nation."
Leung accused his and Yau's critics of "blaming the victim," and argued that it is Beijing which has fostered support for independence through its heavy-handed actions.
"They're the ones who caused a generation of Hong Kongers to think that 'one country, two systems,' isn't working," he said.
Yau added that people should recognize the arrangement is "a failed experiment, no country would choose to rule a city in this way."
If Hong Kong does not become independent, she said, then it is just the same as any other Chinese city.

Despite widespread outrage over Beijing's intervention, including mass protests, Yau and Leung have also come in for a whirlwind of criticism, even from anti-Beijing quarters.
Chinese state media said that it was "the will and demand of the entire population of China" that the pair be ejected, and pro-Beijing groups staged a protest against them holding signs such as "Yau and Leung get out of China."

While other pro-democrat lawmakers have largely stood in solidarity with the pair, outside LegCo reaction has been decidedly mixed, with some supporters even expressing frustration over Yau and Leung's actions.

While Yau and Leung said they are determined to keep fighting to the end (the case has not yet reached Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal), it is clear events are taking their toll.

"Most Hong Kongers are sympathetic to us," Yau said. 

At times however, criticism has turned personal.
The youngest woman ever elected to LegCo, Yau has frequently been the target of offensive and sexist comments, and at a protest last month pro-Beijing groups displayed a naked sex doll with her face on it.
While Yau denied that her gender has been a factor, she said the criticism has made her family worry for her safety.
Paraphrasing a song lyric by Canto-rock singer Candy Lo, Leung said he could handle being "abandoned by the world" so long as he had something to love.
"Hong Kong is like a sinking ship," he said, but one he hoped to save.

More Hong Kong lawmakers at risk of losing office as China equates self-determination with independence

By Ellie Ng

Basic Law Committee Chair Li Fei has said that self-determination is the same as Hong Kong independence and therefore contravenes the territory’s mini-constitution. 

Analysts say that lawmakers who challenge China’s sovereignty will be at risk of disqualification despite having been sworn-in.
The comment came shortly after China’s top legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), voted on and passed the NPCSC’s interpretation of the Basic Law Article 104 of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region with unanimous support on Monday. 

It is the fifth Basic Law interpretation since the 1997 handover.

Self-determination
Li said that concepts such as national self-determination and the Hong Kong nation are “essentially” the same as Hong Kong independence, which would contravene the Basic Law which states that Hong Kong is an “inalienable” part of China. 

It would also damage the territory’s rule of law, social order and economy, he said.
Li added that pledging loyalty to Hong Kong and not China practically means support for Hong Kong independence.
Although Li referred to “national self-determination,” which is advocated by the Youngspiration party, there are concerns that advocates of “democratic self-determination” – such as the Demosistō party and independent lawmakers Lau Siu-lai and Edward Yiu Chung-yim – will also be affected.
The latest NPCSC interpretation of the Basic Law said that oaths taken by public officers such as lawmakers and judges are legally binding. 

It warns that those who make a “false oath” or break their oath will be disqualified from assuming public office and bear “legal consequences.”

Lau Siu-lai. 

‘Lawmakers at risk of disqualification’
Lau Siu-kai, former top policy adviser to the government, said on an RTHK programme on Monday that Beijing needed to interpret the Basic Law to make clear its strong stance against moves that could harm China’s national interests. 

The introduction of a national security law would not have effectively solved the imminent issue, he added.
He said the future of Hong Kong should be decided by the whole of China, and that the territory has no right to become independent.
Lau added that the scale of the pro-independence camp in Hong Kong is not big compared with those in Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang. 

Nonetheless, he said, the Chinese government cannot tolerate pro-independence forces in Hong Kong.

The professor predicted that Youngspiration’s Yau Wai-ching and Baggio Leung Chung-hang are very likely going to be disqualified as lawmakers. 

But the interpretation does not only target the pair; it also aims at provide legal guidance for other oath-taking events, he said.
He cannot rule out the possibility of people filing judicial reviews against lawmakers such as Lau Siu-lai, one of the self-determination advocates in the legislature.
Any lawmakers who advocate independence or challenge China’s sovereignty will be disqualified, as they will have broken the oath, Lau Siu-kai said. 

He added that it would depend on how the authorities handled Monday’s interpretation by the NPCSC.

Criticism
IT sector lawmaker Charles Mok criticised Li’s comment for adding words to the interpretation, which did not mention “self-determination.”
“What do you mean by ‘essentially’? You think you are the law, but let us tell you: you have not solved the problem, but have only made it bigger,” Mok said.
Activist Joshua Wong of the Demosistō party said: “Democratic self-determination means allowing Hongkongers to decide the future of Hong Kong by democratic means. Today, the Chinese Communist Party characterised it as independence.”

Joshua Wong

“It looks like the day when Beijing equates anti-Article-23 [security law] and ‘end one-party rule’ with fueling pro-independence forces is not far away,” Wong said.
Wong’s former colleague Tommy Cheung, one of the student leaders behind the 2014 pro-democracy Occupy protests, said: “If self-determination is independence, then everything is the same as Hong Kong independence.”
A protest against Beijing’s interpretation of the Basic Law was held on Sunday. 

It ended with clashes outside the China Liaison Office, Beijing’s organ in Hong Kong.

Independentist Hong Kong Lawmakers Draw Blunt Response From China

By MICHAEL FORSYTHE and ALAN WONG

The recently elected Hong Kong lawmaker Sixtus Leung, center with glasses, was restrained by security officers after trying to retake his oath of office on Wednesday.

HONG KONG — It started with an oath of office that two young, newly elected lawmakers altered to insert a derogatory term into the formal name of Hong Kong’s sovereign ruler, the People’s Republic of China, with one also adding a crude epithet.
In addition to substantially revising the pledge of loyalty that all members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council are required to take, the lawmakers, Yau Wai-ching and Sixtus Leung, known as Baggio, displayed a banner with the words “Hong Kong Is Not China” at their swearing-in.
And China is responding with some bluntness of its own.
Hong Kong’s government, loyal to Beijing, has asked the court system in the city, a former British colony, to review whether the council can let the lawmakers retake their oaths of office.
The Hong Kong government and Beijing want the two representatives, who support independence for the territory, to vacate their seats rather than simply retake the oaths.
A court in Hong Kong is set to hold a hearing on the matter on Thursday.
But a fusillade of invective against the pair in China’s state-controlled news media on Wednesday is leading to fears, backed by reports in Hong Kong news outlets, that Beijing may circumvent Hong Kong’s legal process by issuing a rare interpretation of the city’s mini-constitution that would effectively bar Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung from office.
That prospect has alarmed people in the political, academic and legal communities in Hong Kong.
The city has a strong and independent legal system, inherited from the British, that China has vowed to honor until at least 2047, as part of the agreement that paved the way for the resumption of Chinese rule in 1997.
But a clause in the city’s mini-constitution, known as the Basic Law, gives China’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress, final say over interpretations of that constitution, though the provision has rarely been invoked.
If the Congress’s standing committee, which is in session, rules on the matter, it would amount to mainland China, where there is no tradition of independent courts and no expectations of genuine debate on legal interpretations, overriding the highly developed Hong Kong court system.
The committee may meet to discuss the matter as early as this week.
The independence of Hong Kong’s judiciary is one of the reasons that so many multinational companies, banks and law firms have their Asian headquarters in the city.
Eric Cheung, a law lecturer at the University of Hong Kong, said in an interview that any interpretation by the National People’s Congress “fundamentally undermines our rule of law and the interpretation power of our courts.” 
On Wednesday, the Hong Kong Bar Association said in a statement that an interpretation by Beijing would “deal a severe blow to the independence of the judiciary and the power of final adjudication of the Hong Kong court.”
It added, “The irreparable harm it will do to Hong Kong far outweighs any purpose it could possibly achieve.”

Yau Wai-ching and Mr. Leung outside the Legislative Council building in Hong Kong on Wednesday. Hong Kong’s government, loyal to Beijing, has asked the court system to rule on whether the council can let the two lawmakers retake their oaths.

The actions of Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung, as well as other advocates of greater self-determination for Hong Kong, have touched a raw nerve in Beijing, which harshly suppresses independence movements in other parts of China, such as Tibet and Xinjiang.
But in Hong Kong, which was promised considerable autonomy under the “one country, two systems” principle, people are free to express such sentiments without fear of arrest.
That freedom was on display on Oct. 12, the day they took their oaths, when Mr. Leung and Ms. Yau pronounced China “Chee-na,” which is similar to a derogatory term for China used during World War II.
With its normal instruments of authoritarian repression of limited use in Hong Kong, China has turned its propaganda arms on the pair.
On Wednesday, the Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily published an interview with Mo Jihong, a legal researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who called Ms. Yau’s and Mr. Leung’s actions “obvious malice.”
“Such things cannot be allowed to happen in China’s territory,” Mr. Mo said.
“If Hong Kong cannot deal with it properly, the central government should make a decisive move: It cannot allow a festering pustule to become the bane of your life, and it must nip the trend of Hong Kong independence in the bud.”
Ms. Yau, 25, and Mr. Leung, 30, were also strident in pushing back against the possibility of intervention by the Chinese Communist Party.
In a chaotic scene on Wednesday, they burst into the legislative chambers and tried to retake their oaths.
They were unsuccessful.
The council’s president said their actions were “ridiculous.”
“My concern is the destruction of ‘one country, two systems,’ ” Ms. Yau told reporters.
“Once the C.C.P. government chooses to interpret the Basic Law, it means that the dictatorship of the C.C.P. government has come to Hong Kong, which all Hong Kong people don’t want.”
And Mr. Leung brought up a point that seems obvious to many in Hong Kong.
The move for independence is new and is a direct outgrowth of the last time the National People’s Congress chose to set rules on how Hong Kong runs its affairs.
That was in 2014, when the congress set strict guidelines for elections for Hong Kong’s top official that all but guaranteed that only pro-Beijing candidates could appear on the ballot.
That decision set off enormous protests that led to the founding of Mr. Leung’s and Ms. Yau’s political party, Youngspiration.
The main belief guiding supporters of independence is that China’s interference undermines “one country, two systems.”
“ ‘One country, two systems’ and Hong Kong independence are the two models for Hong Kong’s political system,” Mr. Leung told reporters.
“When you destroy one option, you inevitably promote the other option.”
The 2014 ruling was telegraphed well ahead of time.
But news of a possible intervention by the National People’s Congress on the oath-taking caught many people by surprise.
In the issue involving the two lawmakers, the principal relevant law is a local ordinance on oath-taking, said Mr. Cheung, the legal scholar.
That shouldn’t be in the jurisdiction of the National People’s Congress, he said.
What’s more, the congress would be acting pre-emptively and not allowing the court proceedings in Hong Kong to run their course.
Since 1997, China’s legislature has made only four interpretations of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, and customarily that has been only after a request by Hong Kong’s highest court.

The People’s Refucking of Shina

My oath - new brave generation of Hong Kong lawmakers insults China
By Zheping Huang

Yau Wai-ching takes to the podium. 

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy lawmakers have long used the swearing-in ceremony, held every four years, to defy Beijing’s creeping control over the semi-autonomous city. 

In the past, for instance, they’ve added new phrases to the oath, or chanted anti-Beijing slogans before or after approaching the podium, or carried banners with words (like “universal suffrage”) sure to irritate the mainland’s Chinese Communist Party. 

It’s become something of a tradition.
The latest swearing-in ceremony was held on Oct. 12, and some fine additions to the tradition were added to the mix. 

One lawmaker toted a yellow umbrella—a symbol of the 2014 Occupy protests—and another held a torn-up copy of controversial legislation helping Beijing pre-screen candidates for Hong Kong’s top position of “chief executive.”
But then things took a funny turn, thanks to younger legislators who emerged from the street protest two years ago and were elected for the first time last month.
Among them was Yau Wai-ching, a 25-year-old from the newly formed Youngspiration party. After her first oath was rejected by the Legco secretary, Yau quickly made a second attempt. 

She said: “I Yau Wai Ching do solemnly sincerely and truly declare and affirm that, being a member of the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Refucking of Shina, I will uphold the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Refucking of Shina, bear allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Refucking of Shina and serve the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region conscientiously, dutifully, in full accordance with the law, honestly and with integrity.”
In this version, she changed “People’s Republic of China” into “People’s Refucking of Shina.”
By doing that, Yau slapped the Communist regime in the face.

Shina is an archaic way of referring to China in Japanese. 

It originated from Cina in Hindu texts (pdf, p. 7). 

The word was used neutrally in both Japanese and Chinese until Japan invaded China during the Second World War. 

Since then, it’s been considered an offensive racial slur aimed at Chinese. 

In 1946, the Japanese government banned the term (link in Japanese) in any formal publications, at the request of Republic of China’s government.
Shina is offensive to Chinese, according to a commentary about Yau’s oath in HK01, a digital publication calls itself “advocacy media.” 

The word is just as offensive in Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan as it is in mainland China, it added, with the most recent headline-grabbing outburst being in 2014, when Hong Kongers taunted Chinese tourists and immigrants as “locusts” and Shina on the streets and online.
Yau’s Youngspiration colleague, 30-year-old Leung Chun-hang, took a similar oath that also incorporated Shina. 

They are as a result banned from voting in subsequent sessions in the Legco, unless they retake the oath sticking to the script.