Two rights groups quit HK over security laws
At least two political rights groups advocating democracy have quietly quit Hong Kong and moved overseas, unnerved by a national security law that has fanned fears over the erosion of freedoms under China's rule, sources told Reuters.
In the past, China-focused rights groups had valued the wide-ranging autonomy, including freedom of speech and assembly, guaranteed for Hong Kong when control over the former British colony was returned to Beijing in 1997.
But some non-government organisations (NGOs) say the new legislation means they face a choice of either having to leave Hong Kong or work with the same kind of fears and constraints they would encounter in mainland China.
The New School for Democracy moved to Taiwan in September, two months after Beijing imposed the contentious security law on its freest city. Founded by Wang Dan, an exiled student leader of the crushed 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, the group focuses on bringing together activists from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong in order to promote democracy in Chinese society. "Our organisation often criticises the Chinese government, and we participate in Hong Kong's democracy fight," Xing
Zhong, the group's secretary-general, told Reuters. "We were quite concerned about the safety of our staff."
Another reason the NGO has moved, according to a source with direct knowledge, is that the NGO receives sizable funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, a Washington-based group that pro-Beijing newspapers Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao often label as a subversive agency.
Wang declined to say whether his group received funding from NED, but said the authorities could now bar groups like his from having access to funds.
"Bank accounts opened by NGOs in Hong Kong banks are in danger of being frozen at any moment," Wang said, noting that authorities in Hong Kong had blocked the accounts of leading pro-democracy activists. "That is why I believe that Hong Kong today is no longer suitable for the existence and activities of NGOs."
The Hong Kong government and Beijing's representative office in the city did not respond to a request for comment. Under the broadlydefined security legislation, crimes such as subversion, secession, collusion with foreign forces and terrorism can be punished with up to life in jail. Since the law was implemented in June, scores of pro-democracy activists have been arrested, legislators disqualified and books removed from library shelves as part of a sweeping crackdown on dissent. Concerns over funding for NGOs have also intensified.
Global Innovation Hub, a unit of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, a German think-tank that was expelled from China in 1997, also moved to Taiwan in September, citing safety concerns for staff.
The group, which promotes liberal democratic values without being specifically focused on China, has close ties to Germany's Free Democratic Party, and feared that it could have been considered a "foreign agent" under the new security law.
Anna Marti, the head of Global Innovation Hub, told Reuters that Taiwan was now the best place in the region for the group to work on topics such as the digitalisation of democracy.