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A jailed Hong Kong lawyer defies Beijing’s campaign to subjugate the city
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Reuters
Posted: December 12th, 2022
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/china-la...
[Chow Hang-tung] is one of the few activists who still openly challenge the legitimacy of China’s Communist Party leaders, after Beijing launched a wide-ranging crackdown here in response to mass pro-democracy protests in 2019. She is facing two national security charges, including inciting subversion, a new offense in Hong Kong that carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. Chow’s arrest ... was further confirmation of Beijing’s plan to fundamentally alter China’s freest city by rolling back civil liberties and dismantling its once vibrant pro-democracy movement, say activists, rights lawyers and foreign diplomats. Authorities there have employed threats, disbarment, arbitrary detention, torture and imprisonment to crush legal and political challenges from hundreds of human rights lawyers and legal scholars since Chinese leader Xi Jinping took power a decade ago. Many activists, fearing long jail terms, have gone silent. Others have fled abroad. And dozens of civil rights groups have shut down, fearing retribution.When it comes to “the ability to cower and coerce, we are no match to the communist state,” Chow said. But, she added: “Force can only achieve so much. The state can lock up people but not their thinking, just as it can lock up facts but not alter truth.” Chow herself downplays her incarceration. “In a sense,” she told Reuters, “isn’t the authoritarian state itself a bigger prison?”
Note: In a separate case to Chow's, 47 pro-democracy campaigners are facing charges under the national security law. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
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