Chinese leaders described the law as a “sword” hanging over the heads of critics (depiction)
Hong Kong:
Hong Kong stripped four pro-democracy lawmakers of their seats on Wednesday, immediately after China gave the city the power to disqualify politicians considered a threat to national security.
The ouster comes after 19 pro-democracy lawmakers in the semi-autonomous city’s legislature on Monday threatened to resign “en masse” if their colleagues were disqualified.
The Hong Kong government said the four “would immediately lose their qualification as lawmakers.”
The statement came after the National People’s Congress Standing Committee – one of China’s top legislative committees – ruled that Hong Kong can remove any lawmaker deemed a threat to national security without going through the courts.
The disqualifications are the latest blow to the city’s beleaguered democratic movement, which has come under sustained attack since China imposed sweeping national security law, including arrests for social media posts and activists fleeing abroad.
It was imposed in June to quell months of huge and often violent protests in the financial center.
Chinese leaders have described it as a “sword” hanging over the heads of critics.
‘My honor’
“If due process, the protection of systems and functions and the struggle for democracy and human rights resulted in the consequences of disqualification, that would be my honor,” Dennis Kwok told reporters on Wednesday, one of the disqualified lawmakers.
The four were originally barred from standing in the semi-autonomous city’s legislative elections, due on September 6, after calling on the United States to impose sanctions on Hong Kong officials.
These elections have been postponed, with authorities blaming the coronavirus.
Hong Kong’s legislature passes the territory’s laws, but only half of its 70 members are directly elected – and a complex nomination system ensures the city’s pro-Beijing establishment a nice majority.
Scuffles and protests erupt regularly, with the pro-democracy minority often resorting to filibustering and other tactics to try to stop bills it opposes.
A massive resignation would leave the legislature made up almost entirely of those who follow the Beijing line.
Hong Kong pro-Beijing leader Carrie Lam said the disqualifications were “constitutional, legal, reasonable and necessary.”
The inability of Hong Kong people to elect their leaders and lawmakers has been at the heart of growing opposition to the Beijing regime.
More than 10,000 people have been arrested during protests for democracy, and the courts are now filled with trials – many of which involve opposition lawmakers and prominent activists.
Critics say the law’s broadly worded provisions are a hammer blow to the faltering freedoms China promised Hong Kong to uphold after British colonial rule ended in 1997.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
