Hong Kong independence

Hong Kong democracy camp kicks off 2019 with protests, braces for confrontational year

AFP-JIJI

A pro-independence supporter raises an umbrella with British flags as she takes part in an annual New Year's Day march in Hong Kong Tuesday.

HONG KONG - Hong Kong’s embattled democracy advocates kicked off 2019 with a large street rally on Tuesday, lamenting what they said had been a grim year for freedoms and steeling themselves for fresh battles with Beijing.
A thousands-strong crowd — including independence activists — protested over disappearing political freedoms, rising inequality and the local government’s coziness with big business and Beijing.
Semi-autonomous Hong Kong currently enjoys liberties unseen on the mainland including freedom of expression and the press under a deal struck with Britain before the 1997 handover.
But concern is growing that those rights are being eroded by an increasingly assertive China ruled by Xi Jinping.
Last year city authorities made a series of unprecedented moves that caused alarm among activists and prompted rare criticism from Western governments.
In September a pro-independence political party was banned under an obscure national security law designed to target triad gangs.
Soon after a Financial Times journalist who chaired a talk with that party’s leader at a press club found himself effectively expelled after officials refused to renew his visa.
Authorities also continued to bar political candidates from standing for local elections if they held pro-independence views.
“We have experienced a lot in 2018 — society, politics and people’s livelihood have all regressed. I can’t see hope in 2019,” protester Kwan Chun-pong, a 47-year-old production line manager, told AFP.
The majority of Hong Kong’s democracy advocates want people to have a greater say in how their city is run, such as the ability to directly elect their leader.
Mass pro-democracy demonstrations in 2014 blockaded parts of the city for 79 days but failed to win any meaningful concessions.
A group of independence activists emerged from the failure of the 2014 protests, rattling local and mainland authorities.
Independence activists — some of them masked — attended Tuesday’s rally, followed by police officers with video cameras.
“We are still coming out today because we still love this place, we want it to change, we want the next generation to feel proud of Hong Kong’s identity,” activist Wayne Chan shouted through a loud-hailer.
The Hong Kong government rejects the suggestion that rights are slipping and says campaigning for independence contravenes the city’s mini-constitution.
The Civil Human Rights Front, which organized Tuesday’s march, does not support independence but argues the city’s free speech laws should allow others to campaign for it.
Activists face new challenges in 2019 with the government hoping to table new national security legislation and laws that would ban disrespecting China’s national anthem.
A number of 2014 protest leaders will also find out in April whether a court will jail them after they were prosecuted under a slew of little-used public order offenses.

Taiwan burnishes its freedom credentials even as China closes diplomatic doors

By Kirsty Needham 

Beijing -- For Taiwan, it has been the best of weeks and the worst of weeks.
First it suffered its biggest diplomatic humiliation in a decade, shut out of the world's peak health summit in Geneva, at China's demand.
Yet just two days later, the island was exalted by the international community for breaking new ground in Asia as Taiwan's high court ruled in favour of same-sex marriage.
Both events came as Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen marked a year since her inauguration, and a seismic shift in Taiwan's politics.

First year in office: Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. 

For nine years under her predecessor Ma Ying-jeou, the Kuomintang (KMT) had built an economic bridge to China, allowing direct flights, tourism, and trade, but overreached and alienated young voters facing high unemployment.
In her inauguration speech as president, Ms Tsai -- leader of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which has traditionally leaned towards independence -- had refused to acknowledge Beijing's core policy on cross-strait relations, the so-called 1992 Consensus that there is one China.
China froze official communication. 

The consequences are still flowing. 

Chinese tourist numbers to Taiwan fell 42 per cent in the first three months of 2017.
On Friday a former DPP employee, human rights activist Li Ming-che, became the first Taiwanese to be arrested in China on subversion charges. 

His wife, Li Ching-yu, said on Monday she is yet to be notified by the Chinese government, despite previous agreements between China and Taiwan that notification of a detention occur within 24 hours.
Taiwan's annual sky lantern festival is among its major attractions for tourists.

China has racheted up efforts to isolate Taiwan internationally.
After meeting Xi Jinping at the Belt and Road forum in Beijing on May 18, Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama shut down his country's representative office in Taipei the next day. 

Only 21 small nations offer diplomatic recognition to Taiwan.

The tourism industry in Taiwan, seen here during a protest in September, is feeling the pinch as relations with mainland China go sour. 

Australia, which abides by the One China policy, was among the four major countries to risk China's ire and speak in Taiwan's support at the opening of the World Health Assembly on May 22.
Australia's Chief Medical Officer, Brendan Murphy, told the meeting it was "Australia's strong view" that the World Health Organisation was unique and needed to be as inclusive as possible.
Same-sex marriage supporters cheer after Taiwan's Constitutional Court ruled in favour of same-sex marriage. 

"The practice over the last eight years of inviting Taiwan as an observer to the WHA was a valuable signal of the WHO's engagement with Taiwan and Australia supports this practice continuing," Mr Murphy said in Australia's opening statement, according to a transcript.
But China's view that Taiwan couldn't attend because Ms Tsai refused to acknowledge the 1992 Consensus prevailed.
December 2016: Tsai Ing-wen (centre) speaks on the phone with US President-elect Donald Trump, prompting an angry backlash from Beijing. 

Sheryn Lee, a Macquarie University associate lecturer in security studies, says China's moves to cut off Taiwan's voice in the international area have "taken a step up" since Ms Tsai's inauguration, and have a long-term objective of reunification.
"Taiwan receives less and less recognition for its de facto sovereignty," she says.
"I think the election of Trump and his phone call [with] Tsai definitely did not help. Taiwan-China relations must also consider the US and its security guarantee for Taiwan. If the US's 'strategic ambiguity' approach becomes dismantled because of Trump's erratic [behaviour], then Taiwan-China relations will worsen."
Ms Lee says Ms Tsai was voted in to address domestic socio-economic problems, so both political parties in Taiwan are invested in maintaining the status quo in cross-strait relations.
But she says clearly acknowledging the 1992 Consensus would be a "political nightmare" for Ms Tsai, as 42 per cent of voters in Taiwan are swing voters.
Jerome Cohen, an NYU law professor and senior fellow at the US Council on Foreign Relations think tank, says the same-sex marriage ruling was "a shot in the arm for Taiwan's standing in the world".
His former students famously include the last president, Mr Ma.
Professor Cohen wrote that Taiwan's constitutional court ruling "reminds people of the immense progress [Taiwan] has made, although a Chinese civilisation, in instituting legal protection for human rights, judicial independence, separation of powers and all the other 'Western values' openly condemned on the [Chinese] mainland at present."
News of Taiwan's same-sex marriage ruling ricocheted through Australian social media, where politicians, same-sex marriage advocates and opponents alike were reminded that Taiwan is different to China.
Professor Cohen points out Taiwan's national security and survival depend on the willingness of the US, Japan and other democratic countries to guarantee its protection against the threat of military action by mainland China.
"That willingness will turn in large part on the extent to which those countries are aware of Taiwan's accomplishments in achieving political freedoms," he wrote.