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The Hong Kong Journalists Association is hoping it can avoid that fate. As Hong Kong’s Civil Society Buckles, One Group Tries to Hold On. Unions and other organizations have dissolved after facing pressure under a new security law.
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The Hong Kong Journalists Association is hoping it can avoid that fate. Send any friend a story. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. Give this article. Journalists trying to take pictures of Jimmy Lai at a court hearing in Hong Kong last December. Mr. Lai owned Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper that was forced to close this year. Credit. Kin Cheung/Associated Press. HONG KONG — Unions have folded. Political parties have shut down. Independent media outlets and civil rights groups have disappeared. The Hong Kong government, its authority backed fully by Beijing, is shutting down the city’s civil society, once the most vibrant in Asia, one organization at a time. But one group, the Hong Kong Journalists Association, has refused to fold, even as Hong Kong’s security secretary repeatedly singles it out for public criticism. “We will try to fight to the last moment,” said Ronson Chan, the association’s chairman. “But honestly, it’s a gamble. How cruelly will the Beijing government treat us? We know the history of journalists in the People’s Republic of China.” The authorities have used a national security law, which was introduced last year after months of widespread antigovernment protest, to silence dissent. Dozens of groups have been forced to disband. Many face investigations. The police have arrested the leaders of some groups and have used the security law to force them to disclose information about membership and funding. Some groups have been the targets of attacks from officials and state-controlled newspapers. Neither part of the government nor the private sector, civil society provides a bulwark against the excesses of both. It gives people a way to be heard when the powers that be are against them and helps respond to problems governments won’t address. The actions against the labor unions and nonprofit organizations reach beyond Hong Kong, too. Because of the city’s relative freedom, it functions as the center for efforts to protect rights in China and the broader region. But that status is eroding under the crackdown. A demonstration as the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions voted to disband on Oct. 3. The group had faced growing pressure from the government. Credit. Louise Delmotte/Getty Images. “These groups were important not just to Hong Kong or even China, but to all of Asia,” said Maya Wang, a senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch. “Now, bit by bit, that fabric of civil society is being taken apart.” Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York, left Hong Kong after it was penalized by China in retaliation for American legislation supporting Hong Kong protesters in 2019. Read More on Organized Labor in the U.S. Apple : Employees at a Baltimore-area Apple store voted to unionize, making it the first of the company’s 270-plus U.S. stores to do so. The result provides a foothold for a budding movement among Apple retail employees. Starbucks: When a Rhodes scholar joined Starbucks in 2020, none of the company’s 9,000 U.S. locations had a union. She hoped to change that by helping to unionize its stores in Buffalo. Improbably, she and her co-workers have far exceeded their goal. Amazon: A little-known independent union scored a stunning victory at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island. But unlike at Starbucks, where organizing efforts spread in a matter of weeks, unionizing workers at Amazon has been a longer, messier slog. A Shrinking Movement: Although high-profile unionization efforts have dominated headlines recently, union membership has seen a decades-long decline in the United States. “Our China team continues to function and to track Hong Kong developments closely,” said Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch. Amnesty International said on Monday that it was closing its local and regional offices in Hong Kong because the security law had made it impossible for human rights groups to operate in the city. The biggest local group to fall has been the Confederation of Trade Unions, an umbrella organization made up of more than 70 affiliate unions. It voted on Oct. 3 to disband in the face of growing pressure from the government. The confederation helped organize a dockworkers’ strike in 2013 and a street cleaners’ strike in 2018. Its political activities, including protests and a general strike during the 2019 unrest that roiled the city, probably made it a target of the authorities. “Union activity is very unglamorous in Hong Kong,” said Ms. Wang, citing the city’s weak labor protections. “There is basically no reward, but they persisted anyway.” The confederation’s general secretary, Lee Cheuk-yan, is serving time in prison for illegal assembly over the 2019 protests. He and Carol Ng, the group’s former chairwoman, have also been charged with subversion in separate cases under the security law. The group said it was forced to dissolve after its leaders were threatened. “A few of our leaders received quite intimidating and concrete warnings that they were facing threats to their person or even their families if the C.T.U. remained in operation,” said C.F. Fan, a research officer for the group.
date in asia hong kong