HONG KONG – Hong Kong police arrested about 50 pro-democracy figures on Wednesday for allegedly violating the new national security law by participating in an unofficial primary election held last year to increase their chances of controlling the legislature, according to political parties and local media.
Among those arrested on suspicion of subversion were former legislators and pro-democracy activists, reported the South China Morning Post and the online platform Now News.
The mass arrests were the biggest movement against the democratic movement in Hong Kong since the national security law was imposed by Beijing in the semi-autonomous territory in June last year. The police did not immediately comment on the arrests.
At least seven members of the Hong Kong Democratic Party – the city’s largest opposition party – have been arrested, including former party chairman Wu Chi-wai. Former lawmakers Helena Wong, Lam Cheuk-ting and James To were also arrested, according to a post on the party’s Facebook page.
Benny Tai, a key figure in the 2014 Occupy Central protests in Hong Kong and a former law professor, was also arrested by the police, according to local media reports. Tai was one of the primary organizers of the primaries.
The home of Joshua Wong, a prominent pro-democracy activist serving a 13 1/2 month prison sentence for organizing and participating in an unauthorized protest last year, was also raided, according to a tweet posted in the report. Wong.
According to records based on local media reports about the arrests, all pro-democracy candidates who participated in the unofficial primaries were arrested.
The police also went to the headquarters of Stand News, a prominent pro-democracy online news site in Hong Kong, with a court order to deliver documents to assist in an investigation related to national security law, according to a video broadcast live Stand News. No arrests were made.
In the past few months, Hong Kong has arrested several pro-democracy activists, including Wong and Agnes Chow, for their involvement in protests against the government, and others have been charged under national security law, including the media mogul and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai.
The security law criminalizes acts of subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign powers to intervene in city affairs. Serious offenders can face the maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Pro-democracy activists and lawmakers held an unofficial primary election last July to find out which candidates they should run in a now postponed legislative election that would increase their chances of getting a majority in the legislature. Winning a majority would allow the pro-democracy camp to vote against projects they considered pro-Beijing, block budgets and paralyze the government.
More than 600,000 Hong Kong residents voted in the primaries, although pro-Beijing lawmakers and politicians criticized the event and warned that it could violate the security law, which Beijing imposed on the city to crack down on dissent after months of protests against the government.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said in July last year that if the primary elections were to resist all political initiatives by the Hong Kong government, this could be under the subversion of state power, an offense to the law national security.
Beijing also criticized the primaries as illegal, calling them “serious provocation” to Hong Kong’s electoral system.
After the British transferred Hong Kong to China in 1997, the semi-autonomous Chinese city has operated in a “one country, two systems” structure that provides it with freedoms not found on the continent. In recent years, Beijing has said it has more control over the city, sparking criticism that Hong Kong’s freedom was under attack.
The legislative elections, originally scheduled for September, were later postponed for a year after Lam said holding elections would be a public health risk due to the coronavirus pandemic. The pro-democracy camp denounced the postponement as unconstitutional.
In November, all Hong Kong’s pro-democracy legislators resigned en masse after Beijing passed a resolution that led to the disqualification of four from its camp, leaving a largely pro-Beijing legislature.
“Beijing, once again, has failed to learn from its mistakes in Hong Kong: that repression breeds resistance and that millions of Hong Kong people will persist in their struggle for their right to vote and stand for a democratically elected government,” Rights Humans Watch senior researcher in China Maya Wang said in a statement on Wednesday’s arrests.
In additional comments to the Associated Press, Wang said it was unclear which provisions of the law were being cited to justify the arrests, but that local officials seem less concerned with the legal substance.
“The very nature of the national security law is a draconian law that allows the government to arrest and potentially jail people for long periods for exercising their constitutionally protected rights,” said Wang.
“The rule of law varnish is also applied in mainland China without any meaning. Hong Kong is looking more like mainland China, but where one ends and the other begins it is difficult to discern, ”she said.