The major democracy movement in Hong Kong dissolves itself
The Civil Rights Front, the coalition behind the major demonstrations for democracy in Hong Kong in 2019 and 2020, has announced its intention to dissolve itself. According to the civil rights movement, this is the result of China’s suppression of the protest movement.
“Civil society faces challenges of unprecedented difficulty,” the movement said in a press release.
Since the protests, the Chinese government has started to silence the opposition in the former British crown colony and dismantle the Western-style system.
Among other things, Beijing has introduced a special security law that undermines the Western justice system, and numerous opposition figures have been imprisoned.
Prison
Recall that last two weeks, the first Hong Kong resident to be convicted under Beijing’s strict, controversial security law in the metropolis was sentenced to nine years in prison on Friday. On Tuesday, Tong Ying-kit, 24, a former waiter, was found guilty of terrorism and incitement to separatism.
The 24-year-old drove a motorcycle into three police officers on July 1, 2020, when the national security law came into effect. At the time, he waved a flag with the slogan ‘liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time’.
His prison term is divided into eight years for the terrorism charge and 6.5 years for the separatism charge. The sentences can largely be served simultaneously and, in practice, constitute a nine-year prison sentence. Tong was injured in the accident and had been using a wheelchair ever since. He has been in custody for a year.
