China Targets More Liberal Hong Kong Lawmakers in Widening Crackdown

Fears grow for a possible purge of pro-democracy legislators
By Kevin Lui / Hong Kong

Newly elected lawmaker Sixtus "Baggio" Leung, center, is restrained by security after attempting to read out his oath of office at the Legislative Council in Hong Kong on Nov. 2, 2016.

Following an unprecedented move by Beijing to effectively bar two newly elected, pro-independence Hong Kong lawmakers from taking their seats, there are now worrying signs that more than a dozen of their more moderate colleagues could be in the central government’s crosshairs.
Speaking at a seminar Wednesday in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, part of the sprawling conurbation that borders Hong Kong, mainland legal official Wang Zhenmin claimed that up to 15 currently serving legislators who favor greater political freedoms for the semiautonomous territory had “brought shame on people across China” by turning their October inaugurations into acts of protest — or, as he put it, “making a show at a solemn oath-taking ceremony” and “turning oath-taking into a joke.”
Wang is the legal chief of China’s Liaison Office — Beijing’s official establishment in Hong Kong.
His remarks came two days after the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), China’s largely ceremonial legislature, decided that pro-independence lawmakers Yau Wai-ching, 25, and Sixtus “Baggio” Leung, 30, should be barred from the legislature because, during their swearing-in ceremonies, they pledged allegiance to the “Hong Kong Nation” instead of Hong Kong as a Special Administrative Region of China, and also referred to China in a manner considered derogatory.
Barring the additional 15 lawmakers would amount to a major purge of liberal voices in the chamber and leave the legislature in complete control of the government and pro-Beijing politicians.
Nathan Law, a student leader who emerged from the Umbrella Revolution protests of 2014 to become, at 23, Hong Kong’s youngest ever legislator, is one of the lawmakers in Beijing’s sights. During his swearing-in, he stuck to the script of the oath, but raised his intonation at the end of “The People’s Republic of China” whenever it was mentioned in the script, as though asking a question. He had also quoted Indian independence icon Mohandas Gandhi before he took the oath.
Law insists that he has taken his oath lawfully. 

“They are trying to launch an all-in war against all the democrats,” he tells TIME. 

“That is political oppression from the Beijing government.”
Also on Wednesday, Ted Hui, a legislator from the Democratic Party, was ejected from the chamber when he questioned the president’s decision not to allow an adjournment debate on the NPCSC’s intervention. 

Efforts by fellow legislators to stop Hui’s eviction led to scuffles, reports Radio Television Hong Kong, causing the meeting to be suspended and relocated.
The NPCSC’s ruling on Yau and Leung followed an appeal to it by the city’s deeply unpopular, pro-Beijing administration. 

The two rebel lawmakers were elected on a wave of popular sentiment that has seen many in Hong Kong consider, for the first time, far greater autonomy for the territory if not self-determination or outright independence.
The committee’s decision comes as the culmination of a weeks-long firestorm and political crisis, which could well become a constitutional one, in a city that has constantly chafed under Beijing’s sovereignty since it was returned to China by former colonial power Britain in 1997. 

Many are furious that the local government invited mainland authorities to rule on a matter that the Hong Kong legislature should have been allowed to independently resolve.
Anger and trepidation over the interference drove thousands onto the territory’s streets Sunday afternoon. 

Skirmishes broke out later that evening, when protesters attempted to approach the gates of the Liaison Office building, forcing the police to disperse the crowd with batons and pepper spray.
Inviting China to rule on the status of Hong Kong legislators “amounts to China directly handpicking legislative candidates,” veteran labor organizer and former pro-democracy lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan tells TIME. 

“It might be that, even the act of merely calling for ending one-party rule in China or opposing the Chinese Communist Party could well be found as out of line.”
David Zweig, a China observer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, tells TIME that while Yau and Leung “brought the wrath of China down on themselves,” pushback from Hong Kong people will only increase if Beijing starts clamping down on other lawmakers.
“It’s going to become a huge crisis” if Beijing does further interfere, he says. 

“At this point it’s just still small-scale protest. But if they use this excuse to cull the Legislative Council of people who they don’t like, that’s a whole different ballgame.”
By Thursday morning local time, local media outlets were reporting that the former head of the politically conservative Taxi Drivers and Operators Association had entered an application at Hong Kong’s High Court for a judicial review, seeking to challenge the validity of the oaths taken by eight pro-democracy lawmakers.

Hong Kong lawyers prepare protest march after China inflames political crisis

By Tom Phillips in Beijing

Newly elected lawmakers Yau Wai-ching (R) and Sixtus Leung (L), who have been barred by China from taking their seats in Hong Kong’s parliament.

Beijing’s unprecedented eviction of two pro-independence activists from Hong Kong’s parliament has dealt a severe blow to “political extremists”, a Communist party-controlled newspaper has claimed as members of the city’s legal community prepared to take to the streets in protest.
One day after Beijing effectively barred Sixtus ‘Baggio’ Leung and Yau Wai-ching from taking up their seats in the former colony’s 70-seat legislative council, an editorial in the Global Times praised their ousting, arguing that the appeasement of such voices would plunge the financial hub into confusion and ruin.
The Communist party’s official mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, said Beijing was taking decisive action against an intolerable and unrepentant collection of pro-independence “elements” who posed a direct threat to China’s sovereignty and national unity.
“The central government will not hesitate to take effective measures to crack down on and curb the “Hong Kong independence” [movement],” it said.
Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post echoed those views, describing the intervention, which came in the form of a highly unusual interpretation of the former colony’s mini-constitution, as a “strong tool to stamp out pro-independence forces”.
“Beijing is determined to keep separatists out of public office,” the pro-establishment newspaper said.
Pro-democracy activists have reacted to the intervention with astonishment and dismay while the British government expressed its concern in a brief and cautiously worded statement.
In a statement released on Monday night two of Hong Kong’s leading pro-democracy voices, Nathan Law and Eddie Chu, said Beijing’s ruling was not simply an attack on two pro-independence politicians but rather an attempt to “put the political reins” on the whole of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.
“All participants in the democratic movement must stand in solidarity, for no one is safe alone, in the face of such a dictatorship which sees any effort to strive for democracy as a secessionist threat to its rule,” they said.
Speaking to the Guardian, on Monday, Holden Chow, a member of Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing community, suggested Beijing’s intervention was indeed intended to cow those politicians who dared to promote causes such as independence from China.
Chow said Beijing’s move against Yau and Leung should also serve as a warning to those backing “self-determination” -- the idea that Hong Kong’s citizens should have a say in how the former colony is governed after 2047 when the current ‘one country, two systems’ framework under which it has been ruled since handover in 1997 expires.
Chow’s party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), has called for a review of whether another pro-democracy politician, Lau Siu-lai, should also be blocked from taking up her seat because of views.
Hong Kong’s latest political crisis has been brewing for months, with the emergence of a new generation of activists who came of age during the 2014 umbrella movement protests and are now pushing for greater autonomy or outright independence from mainland China.
Six such figures claimed seats in the semi-autonomous city’s parliament in early September, including 25-year-old Yau and 30-year-old Leung, who have publicly backed the idea of a complete split with China.
The two firebrand millennials incurred Beijing’s fury last month when they used a swearing in ceremony as a platform to lash out at China’s rulers, unfurling flags that read “Hong Kong is not China” and using language some found offensive to refer to China.
On Monday, Li Fei, the deputy head of China’s most important legislative panel, told reporters the pair were “national and ethnic traitors”, adding ominously: “All traitors and those who sell out their countries will come to no good end.”
While China’s state-run media has applauded the central government’s clamp down, critics have lamented it as a severe blow to Hong Kong’s limited political autonomy and independent judiciary.
“This is the beginning of the end of Hong Kong,” Claudia Mo, an outspoken pro-democracy legislator, wrote in the Guardian.
Members of Hong Kong’s legal community are set to gather outside its high court on Tuesday afternoon before marching through the former colony’s streets in silence and dressed in black.