China is taking down Hong Kong with hardly a word in our MSM
wsj.com Hong Kong Activists Say Arrests Show Space for Democracy Is Rapidly Shrinking
Natasha Khan
HONG KONG—Hong Kong activists say this week’s mass roundup shows that Beijing’s tolerance for democracy in the city is quickly narrowing, by branding dozens of opposition lawmakers who participated in political primaries as suspects in a plot to paralyze the city.
On Wednesday, about 1,000 police officers carried out predawn arrests of 53 people suspected of subversion for their involvement in political races held by opposition parties last summer to identify candidates for an election that had been scheduled for September. Six were arrested for organizing and planning the races and 47 for their participation.
“This is such a wide net authorities have cast on the pro-democracy camp. Everyone was involved in those primary elections,” said Lee Cheuk-yan, vice chairman of the Labour Party, which had one candidate arrested, Carol Ng. “What road does this lead us down? Who will dare stand for elections again?”
The scale of the operation stunned a pro-democracy movement that was already demoralized and expecting further arrests. Officers fanned out across the city starting at around 6 a.m., knocking on doors, confiscating electronics and bringing people into police stations.
Among those arrested was an American lawyer in his 70s, John Clancey, who could be seen in a video posted on social media leaning on a cane as he was led to a police van. Others included veteran lawmakers and young political hopefuls who had been aiming to enter the legislature last year for the first time.
Police said they searched 72 locations and served four news outlets with court orders to provide information for their investigation. They said they had frozen 1.6 million Hong Kong dollars, or $206,000, related to the campaign.
“Even for all of Beijing’s crackdown over the past few months, Wednesday’s raids were really still quite something,” said Jeffrey Ngo, a Washington-based Hong Kong activist. “The police knocked on the doors of almost every prominent opposition figure in the city you can think of and arrested them all within the span of hours.”
Pro-democracy activist Benny Tai, center, was among the 53 people arrested in Hong Kong on Thursday. Photo: Chan Long Hei/Bloomberg News
The arrests were the latest blow to a pro-democracy movement that captured the world’s attention for much of 2019, at times bringing more than a million people into the streets to demand greater democratic freedoms for Hong Kong. Those aspirations have been crippled by pandemic restrictions that have kept them off the streets this year and a national security law imposed by Beijing that gave authorities broad new powers to prosecute people for subversion, secession and colluding with foreign entities.
The arrests drew international condemnation, including from the U.S. Antony Blinken, President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for secretary of state, said on Twitter that the administration “will stand with the people of Hong Kong and against Beijing’s crackdown on democracy.”
Peter Stano, the European Union’s spokesman for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said the arrests sent a “signal that political pluralism is no longer tolerated in Hong Kong.”
Before Wednesday, a total of around 40 people had been arrested under the national security law for a range of suspected offenses, including collusion and secession. Prosecutors have so far brought charges under the security law against four of those arrested, including media mogul Jimmy Lai.
Under the national security law, those accused of subversion face up to life in prison for the most serious offenses. It couldn’t be determined how many of those arrested Wednesday would be charged.
The primaries at the center of Wednesday’s arrests were part of an opposition strategy that was first drafted by Benny Tai, a legal academic and an architect of the Occupy pro-democracy movement in 2014, in an effort to win a majority in Hong Kong’s 70-seat Legislative Council. The plan was to hold unofficial democratic primaries to avoid fielding too many candidates and diluting support, he had said. The Legislative Council elections were ultimately postponed for a year, with authorities citing the coronavirus pandemic.
Hong Kong authorities say the effort organized by the politicians went beyond the scope of a typical political campaign, accusing the opposition figures of trying to stop Hong Kong’s government from functioning. Secretary of Security John Lee on Wednesday pointed to a “10-step mutual destruction plan”—a reference to an article by Mr. Tai published on the Apple Daily news site in April 2020.
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