A major pro-democracy movement announces its dissolution

The Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), the coalition behind the giant pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong In 2019, Sunday, August 15, he announced his self-dissolution, citing the suppression of protest in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.

Civil society faces unprecedented challenges.The movement explained in a statement.

Founded in 2002 and advocating nonviolence, CHRF has been the source of many massive protests in Hong Kong, including the 2019 protests, which sometimes gathered more than 1 million people in this city of 7.3 million.

Thirty self-dissolving civil society organizations

These demonstrations, sometimes violent, resulted in strong control by the Chinese central power. Beijing specially imposed the National Security Law in 2020 Which, in effect, criminalizes the expression of any form of dissent in Hong Kong. More than sixty people were arrested under this brutal provision.

Many members of the opposition and Western capitals accuse Beijing of reshaping the former British colony in its own image, by putting an end to the “one country, two systems” principle that ruled extradition in 1997. China asserts, however, that national security law was necessary to restore order in Hong Kong after 2019 protests.

Most CHRF activists have been arrested and imprisoned, including former movement leaders Jimmy Sham and Viggo Chan. Another 30 civil society organizations have dissolved themselves out of fear of repression, according to a tally updated by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

On August 10, Hong Kong’s largest union, the Professional Teachers’ Union (PTU), which had 95,000 members and also played an important role in the pro-democracy movement, was significantly corrupted. A few days ago, Chinese state media published articles about this union, calling it A malignant tumor that needs to be removed.