As the days of 2021 dwindled, so did any remaining traces of democracy in Hong Kong.
The Associated PressOn Wednesday, a vocal pro-democracy media outlet -- one of the last openly critical voices in the city -- closed after a police raid. Earlier in December, the opposition was shut out froms under a new law that puts all candidates to a loyalty test. And monuments commemorating the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were taken down.
The days when the former British colony was considered a bastion of freedom fade in memory. Returned to China in 1997, Hong Kong has endured an overhaul of its political system and a crackdown on political dissent. Authorities sought to suppress antigovernment sentiment that led to months of political strife in 2019.
“If no critical information is able to be published about the administration in Hong Kong or in China, then what last vestiges of democracy there were, I think we have to say, have been snuffed out.” That includes 47 people charged with subversion in February over their roles in an unofficial primary election held in 2020 to determine the best candidates to field in planned legislative elections.
The results were predictable: Earlier this month, when the election finally was held, pro-Beijing lawmakers won a landslide victory. The city’s largest opposition party, the Democratic Party, fielded no candidates for the first time since the 1997 handover.
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