Rebel City. South China Morning Post Team
Lam
Adrift and struggling for relevance, the pro-democracy camp suddenly found itself galvanized by an urgent political fight.
Democratic Party chairman Wu Chi-wai has a reputation for being mild-mannered. But in May 2019, he lost his cool as Hong Kong lawmakers clashed repeatedly in the Legislative Council over the government’s extradition bill. The draft legislation was introduced in February and required scrutiny, but for several weeks there was no progress as members bickered and disagreed over fears the proposed law would lead to fugitives being sent to mainland China. At the heart of their increasingly bitter exchanges lay the pan-democratic bloc’s mistrust of Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s motives for proposing extraditions, on a case-by-case basis, to jurisdictions with which Hong Kong had no exchange arrangement. They feared the change would leave anyone in the city at the mercy of party-controlled courts north of the border, where a fair trial is not guaranteed.
On May 9, Wu was among six lawmakers ejected from the chamber for hurling insults and yelling profanities at Lam, calling her a liar after she issued a strongly worded defense of the extradition bill. An enraged Wu accused Lam of toeing the Communist Party line in pushing forward the bill, saying: “How many people do we need to take to the street, pull their business and move elsewhere, to force you to stop?” As he was being escorted from the chamber, he shouted at Lam: “You are useless dead or alive, b***h!”
Two days later, on May 11, Legco was the scene of unprecedented chaos as rival groups of lawmakers pushed, shoved and shouted at each other as they fought to take control of the bills committee scrutinizing the legislation. This happened after 42 pro-establishment lawmakers demanded that Democratic Party member James To Kun-sun be removed from presiding over the committee, as he had delayed the election of a chairman for weeks, thus preventing the panel from getting down to real work. As the longest-serving Legco member, To presided automatically over the body until a chairman was installed. The proestablishment bloc replaced him with veteran lawmaker Abraham Razack, even though this violated Legco convention.
The pan-democratic bloc was not having any of it. Both camps called separate meetings of the bills committee, each claiming the other’s was illegitimate. When Razack arrived, scores of pan-democrats tried to prevent him from entering the meeting room, as pro-establishment lawmakers formed a cordon around the 73-year-old. As they brawled, Wu shouted: “Abraham, please don’t be remembered as a sinner!” Both camps later filed police reports about the clash, which forced the meeting to be adjourned. One lawmaker was taken to hospital and three others said they had been injured. Razack said afterward: “I have never seen such a hostile situation in my 19 years here as a member of Legco.”
Looking back in January 2020, Wu said his uncharacteristic outbursts had been unplanned, though he would not apologize for anything he said or did. He said his conduct, as well as the tactics of his colleagues in the pan-democratic camp, helped raise public awareness of the reasons they opposed the extradition bill so strongly, and sowed the seeds of the anti-bill sentiment. “Some people told me they decided to look into what was going on after seeing that even the Democratic Party, considered a moderate faction of the camp, had adopted such an attitude toward the bill,” he recalled.
Publicity on the pan-democrats’ actions in Legco also began to give the camp a much needed boost after a season in the doldrums. Hong Kong’s social movement lost steam after the pro-democracy Occupy protests, which shut down parts of the city for 79 days in 2014, fizzled out and failed to move Beijing. As a blame game played out, the camp found itself splintered and weakened by infighting, leaving supporters frustrated and disenchanted by the ineffectiveness of street protests. Young people walked away, drawn instead to new “localist” parties that had sprung up. Following the Legco elections in 2016, four pandemocrats and two pro-independence lawmakers lost their seats for their improper oath-taking. The nadir for the camp came in 2018, when its candidates lost two Legco by-elections to pro-establishment candidates.
Pan-democrat lawmakers also failed in 2017 to stop their proestablishment opponents from amending the Legco rule book to curb filibustering, despite warning that the change would allow the administration to bulldoze controversial legislation into law. Only around 100 protesters – mostly middle-aged and older – gathered outside Legco on the day the amendments passed.
The following year, pan-democrats failed to block a contentious bill to set up a mainland customs and border checkpoint at the new West Kowloon terminus of the high-speed cross-border railway. The change would allow, for the first time, mainland laws to be enforced in a part of Hong Kong. This time, about 300 protesters showed up on the day the bill was passed. A source from the pan-democrat camp said: “What hurt us most was that citizens did not seem to care at all.” Wu recalled: “The series of blows seemed to suggest that the legislature was impotent and useless. Even some of our supporters thought that was an accurate description.”
When Lam unveiled the extradition bill in February 2019, pandemocrat lawmakers knew they had to give their all to block it. As well as opposing it ideologically, they saw an opportunity to remind the city of their relevance: to be a check on the government. Although opposition to the bill was initially mild, fears that the proposed law might expose Hongkongers to the mainland’s legal system eventually gave the camp a chance to turn their fortunes around. They realized early on they needed to seize the narrative decisively. In May 2019, lawmakers previously criticized for being too moderate or ineffective made headlines by paralyzing the bill’s passage through Legco and participating in scenes of unprecedented chaos.
They lobbied the international community, attended protests and stood between hard-core masked radicals and riot police in the midst of tear gas and even gunfire. The sight of Democratic Party lawmaker Roy Kwong Chun-yu outside Legco on June 12, perched precariously on metal railings and supported by hard-core protesters in helmets, masks and goggles, was previously unimaginable. Kwong, a 37-year-old romance novelist, used to be mocked by some protesters, who felt the pan-democrats had achieved nothing. Now he was recognizable as a lawmaker who appeared regularly on the front lines. That day he dissuaded the crowd from clashing with police at Legco, urging them to take care and avoid being arrested. Several other pan-democrats were seen at the front lines, although their mediating efforts were sometimes in vain and came in for criticism by the police. Democratic Party lawmaker Ted Hui Chi-fung was arrested during clashes in North Point in September. Kwong said: “I think it is a new role for lawmakers, to be the buffer between protesters and the police. I want to be with the protesters and I think my presence helps put them at ease.”
As anti-government protests gathered steam, the camp presented a rare picture of unity, leading eventually to its landslide victory in the district council elections of November 2019. Pro-democracy candidates swept almost 90 per cent of 452 seats, taking control of 17 of the city’s 18 district councils. The bloc also appeared to have reconnected with the youth. “The Communist Party has exhausted every means to divide the camp since the city’s handover and the infighting reached its peak in 2018 when we lost two Legco by-elections,” Wu said. “Our unity now is a slap in the party’s face.”
From the start, pan-democrat lawmakers viewed the extradition bill with suspicion, regarding it as one of the biggest threats to the former British colony since its return to Chinese rule in 1997. They feared that, if passed, it would fundamentally alter the “one country, two systems” principle under which Hong Kong has been governed since the handover. They immediately set about dividing the work that needed to be done to warn the public of the potential danger. The lawyers among them focused on marshaling legal arguments. Others began meeting foreign diplomats, overseas media and chambers of commerce.
At first, not many foreigners saw a problem with the bill. After all, it appeared sensible to extradite criminals to jurisdictions where they could face justice. Civic Party leader Alvin Yeung Ngok-kiu recalled: “Everyone in Hong Kong understood we had a separate legal system from that of mainland China, but they could not see why it would be harmful to have an extradition agreement with China when that was something so ordinary in their countries. We had to go back to square one and stress how much damage the bill could do to Hong Kong’s legal system, which turned out to be something that foreign stakeholders, including foreign governments and business chambers, treasured the most.” Even then,