HONG KONG - Prince Wong was still in her mother's womb when the Chinese government reclaimed control over Hong Kong from the British in the summer of 1997. She was born nearly three months later, on September 27, into what some here call the city's "cursed generation."
Then this month, a fresh nadir. China's parliament passed a resolution that will effectively bar any opposition politicians deemed subversive from Hong Kong's legislature. City Chief Executive Carrie Lam immediately kicked four pro-democracy lawmakers out of office. Soon after that, the city's democrats resigned en masse, leaving the legislature devoid of any opposition democrats for the first time since Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule.
A year after young activists, veteran democrats, working-class families and middle-class professionals collectively formed the boldest people's revolt against Beijing in decades, Hong Kong is being "mainlandized" with shocking rapidity, democracy advocates say.
All four speak of persevering, keeping the spirit of the movement alive among friends and family, and waiting for the day the city might rise up again.Martin Lee's apartment is airy and spacious, without clutter, each item – from English and French classical furniture to tall Chinese Qing vases – given the space to breathe, redolent of the East-West soul of Hong Kong itself.
Lee, a longtime pacifist embracing the activism and philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, is haunted by the Chinese military's massacre of students and other civilians in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989.
"They've completely failed to achieve anything over the past decades," she said. "I could understand why they did what they did back then, as the time they were in was very different from us. But after all these passing years, if they keep using the same methods, I can't really accept it." Lee Cheuk-yan, a veteran democrat and labour unionist, has come to believe that the democracy movement must evolve even if the outcome could be uncertain.
Article 63 of the national security law states that Chinese law will "prevail" over Hong Kong laws in the event of any dispute, and that some trials could be conducted in closed courts and bail denied defendants. Under the law, suspects in complex cases could be extradited to mainland China and tried under the laws there. Chinese security agents operating in Hong Kong will enjoy immunity from prosecution.
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