GEORGIA L GILHOLY
Last week, seven dissidents were arrested by Hong Kong’s national-security police on charges of ‘offences in connection with seditious intention’. A further six were arrested later the same week for ‘advocating hatred’ against both the Hong Kong government and the CCP, while a seventh was arrested the following day for making ‘seditious’ online posts. An eighth – a 62-year-old man – was arrested this week.
The arrests demonstrate China’s ever-tightening grip on Hong Kong. They are the first known arrests under the newly enacted Article 23 legislation, marking a watershed for the city’s political climate. This new law was passed with terrifying swiftness in March this year, to the alarm of numerous human-rights defenders. It builds on the tyrannical ‘National Security Law’, which was imposed on Hong Kong by the Chinese government in 2020. For the foreseeable future, Hong Kong’s last embers of autonomy have been extinguished.
Among those detained was human-rights advocate Chow Hang-tung, who has been imprisoned since 2021 for organising a peaceful vigil for the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The spiteful targeting of dissidents like Chow sends a clear message: no one is safe from the reach of this draconian law. Critics of the CPP’s takeover of Hong Kong’s can now face up to seven years in prison.
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