2:27 a.m. ET, July 1, 2022
Hong Kong political activists in exile yearn for the city they left behind
From CNN's Kathleen Magramo in Hong Kong
Fugitive former opposition lawmaker Ted Hui speaks with the media in this November 18, 2020 photo.
(Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty Images)
Hong Kong pro-democracy activists and former lawmakers, many of whom are now living in self-imposed exile abroad, have been sharing their hopes and struggles on the 25th handover anniversary.
Fugitive former opposition lawmaker Ted Hui, now based in Australia, said in a Facebook post Friday that "freedom and rule of law are dead" in Hong Kong.
Hui
left the city in 2020 while on bail, dodging charges of perverting the course of justice, access to a computer with dishonest intent, and vandalism — charges he says are politically motivated.
Hui said the anger in his heart "was never extinguished."
"I feel so strongly about Hong Kong as if I’ve never left: I can’t let go of the place I love, and I can’t let go of my comrades in prison," he wrote.
"Hong Kong currently has more than 1,000 political prisoners, in addition to a justice system destroyed by the evil national security law, as well as the total annihilation of free press and democratic society."
Another former lawmaker and prominent activist Nathan Law, who fled Hong Kong for the United Kingdom in 2020, said the city he once knew has become "unrecognizable."
The 28-year-old, who helped lead
the 2014 Umbrella Movement, lives in self-imposed exile but continues to yearn for his hometown.
“The feeling that this piece of land brings is irreplaceable," he said in a Facebook post on Thursday.
During his two years in the UK, he said he has moved houses five times and lived in the constant shadow of anxiety.
“We exist in struggles and in between the cracks: we left to move towards a promised and ideal Hong Kong. After becoming estranged, we look back at the city that retains its glamorous facade, but this 'new Hong Kong' has lost its resonances, we are still yearning to go back [to our old Hong Kong],” he said.
Hong Kong activist and Washington-based historian Jeffrey Ngo said the city's continued fight for democracy rests on its growing diaspora.
With more and more Hong Kong residents opting to emigrate using the British National (Overseas) passport scheme, as well as new immigration pathways laid out by Canada and Australia, Ngo believes the democracy movement needs to be coordinated between those who have left the city.
“Moving forward, [the political movement] will have to be done by people who are prepared to not return to Hong Kong, because the [Hong Kong] national security law claims jurisdiction all around the world,” Ngo told CNN.
Some context: The wording of Hong Kong's national security law
also applies to offenses committed "outside the region" by foreigners who are not residents of Hong Kong or mainland China.