cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/60401384
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/60401372
Six years after China imposed its national security regime, Hong Kong’s democracy movement has been forced behind bars or into exile, and the authorities are targeting the ties between people in exile and those in Hong Kong, says Frances Hui, a Hong Kong activist in exile and policy and advocacy manager at the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation.
Exiled activists are pressing states and international organisations to show support for Hong Kong’s political prisoners.
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Joshua Wong is a prominent activist whose release was in sight, now faces a new sentence for past international advocacy. has been behind bars since November 2020. He was first jailed over protest-related convictions. He was then sentenced to four years and eight months for subversion in the Hong Kong 47 case, which targeted 47 pro-democracy figures for taking part in an unofficial primary election. He was due for release in January 2027, but in June 2025, national security police arrested him inside Stanley Prison, where he was serving his sentence, on a new charge of conspiring to collude with foreign forces.
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The National Security Law was imposed by China on Hong Kong on 30 June 2020, bypassing the city’s legislature. It created four offences: collusion with foreign forces, secession, subversion and terrorism. Each is defined broadly enough to cover peaceful speech and activism, and each carries a sentence of up to life imprisonment. Under the law, judges designated by the chief executive, the city’s leader, have heard cases without juries.
Authorities have used the National Security Law to dismantle civil society. They have prosecuted community organisers, journalists, opposition politicians, students and trade unionists, and dozens of groups have disbanded, citing legal risks. Self-censorship is now embedded across society.
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It has never been clearer that the government aims to keep a symbol of my generation’s democracy movement out of public life. It also wants to wear down his spirit through years of isolation. That’s why prosecutors waited nearly five years to bring this charge, until Joshua had almost finished his sentence.
The case also shows the government using the law even more aggressively against people it can still physically reach, to punish ties with those it cannot reach. Prosecutors linked Joshua to Nathan Law, an exiled activist with a bounty on his head. They treated their years of shared international advocacy, including meeting foreign lawmakers, giving media interviews and calling for international pressure, as a continuing criminal conspiracy.
This turns years of lawful political advocacy into a crime.
“That is the work I, and many Hongkongers in exile, do every day, and it was once part of civic life in Hong Kong, protected by the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution,” Frances Hui says.
“The message for Hongkongers is chilling: cut every tie with those abroad or become the next target.”
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Frances Hui urges Governments to say plainly that this prosecution is political and call for Joshua’s release.
“He should not lose the rest of his life for peaceful political advocacy. The release of political prisoners should be a priority in engagement with China, not an afterthought.”
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Hong Kong’s prison population is at a 20-year high, and Stanley Prison, where Joshua is held, runs at around 144 per cent of capacity. Jimmy Lai is held alone in a windowless cell and his health is deteriorating. Chow Hang-tung, a human rights lawyer who helped organise Hong Kong’s annual Tiananmen Square Massacre vigils, has been transported in metal restraints that caused her sustained pain. The authorities coerce almost every political prisoner into a political ‘rehabilitation’ programme that aims at ‘psychological reconstruction and re-establishment of values’.
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