Hong Kong:
Among the Hong Kong activists facing jail on Thursday is an octogenarian barrister dubbed the “Father of Democracy” who Beijing after asked to support draft the city’s mini-constitution and was generally dismissed by younger activists for getting as well moderate.
In the broad spectrum of Hong Kong’s democracy advocates, 82-year-old Martin Lee would not be regarded as a firebrand.
For decades he has campaigned in vain to see democracy in Hong Kong but normally advocated working alongside authorities in Beijing, even as they branded him a traitor.
He was crucial of younger generations that favoured a more confrontational strategy and remained a vocal opponent of political violence.
Now he faces up to 5 years in jail for assisting to organise a massive, but peaceful, rally throughout the months of political unrest that convulsed Hong Kong in 2019.
“Finally I’ve become a defendant,” he quipped immediately after his arrest final year.
“How do I feel? I’m very much relieved. For so many years, so many months, so many good youngsters were arrested and charged, while I was not arrested. I feel sorry about it.”
That a figure like Lee could be going to jail illustrates how the space for dissent has been all but squeezed out of Hong Kong, even for more moderate voices.
Son of a basic
Lee’s profession mirrors Hong Kong’s current history and political pragmatism runs in his loved ones.
His father Lee Yin-wo was a basic in the Kuomintang forces that lost the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communists.
Despite their variations, the basic-turned-teacher remained in touch with top rated Communist party leaders, which includes Zhou Enlai.
The younger Lee was a common item of Hong Kong’s nearby elite beneath colonial rule.
He studied law in Britain and flitted comfortably involving English, Cantonese and Mandarin. When Hong Kong was convulsed by leftist riots in 1967 throughout the Cultural Revolution, Lee went to defend individuals charged with spearheading the unrest.
In the run-up to Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to China he was one of the lawyers picked by Beijing to draft the Basic Law.
That document grants Hong Kong particular freedoms and autonomy unseen on the authoritarian mainland beneath a model dubbed “one country, two systems”, which includes the eventual guarantee of universal suffrage.
Critics say Beijing’s has demolished that guarantee in current years and Lee was amongst the initially to sound the alarm more than China’s assurances that Hong Kongers could hold their way of life.
After Beijing sent tanks to crush the Tiananmen Square student protests in 1989, Lee began criticising Beijing.
He was turfed out of the Basic Law committee and quickly branded a traitor by state media.
‘Things will explode’
He went on to identified the city’s initially pro-democracy party and joined the post handover Beijing opposition immediately after handover.
But he normally maintained help for “one country, two systems” and the concept that Hong Kong was aspect of China.
After the handover, Britain’s Prince Charles wrote in a diary entry: “Thus we left Hong Kong to her fate and the hope that Martin Lee, the leader of the Democrats, would not be arrested.”
As opposition to Beijing’s rule amongst lots of Hong Kongers hardened, Lee was generally criticised by these who felt his generation’s techniques had failed to reach something close to suffrage.
Student-led democracy protest erupted in 2014 and a new generation of firebrand activsts like Nathan Law and Joshua Wong came to the fore — a precursor to the even bigger and occasionally violent rallies of 2019.
Lee was conscious that his calls for a more patient strategy had grow to be significantly less preferred.
“I’m a public enemy from China’s point of view. And the kids don’t like me, either, because I am not agreeing with their objects,” he told the New York Times final year.
But he stated he recognised why so lots of younger Hong Kongers had been frustrated and accused Beijing of failing to live up to its personal commitments.
“Now China doesn’t even want to follow the rules of its own book,” he told The Guardian final year as the city was blanketed by a sweeping new national safety law.
“But if you continue to suppress people like this, things will explode.”
He remained defiant.
“Even if you jail me, kill me, I will still point out it’s their fault. Democracy will come to China one day.”
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