Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: 赴湯 3.0/Screenshot
A RALLY WAS held on November 9th to call for the release of Hong Kong political prisoners Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung.
Lee and Chow were respectively the chair and vice chair of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China. The group was the primary organizer of the rallies held in Victoria Park annually to commemorate the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre each year on June 4th.
Such rallies historically drew tens of thousands. In the years since the rise of localist sentiments in Hong Kong, it became debated as to whether Hongkongers should commemorate events that took place in China or not, seeing as some Hongkongers had come to increasingly view Hong Kong as an independent nation-state from China. But even so, rallies for Tiananmen Square still continued to be large.
Today, such rallies are no longer able to be held in Hong Kong given the deteriorating political freedoms after the passage of the Hong Kong National Security Law. Now, Taiwan remains the only place in the Chinese-speaking world that can commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
The two have been detained since September 2021 on the basis of pre-trial detention. The rally on Sunday was to mark the start of Lee and Chow’s trials, which were originally supposed to take place in May but were delayed. However, the trials have been delayed again to January 22nd.
It is to be seen whether the trial will only be delayed again next year. Such delays are likely a tactic to try and minimize public attention.
The trial of Jimmy Lai, the publisher of the pro-democracy tabloid, the Apple Daily, recently finished in November. Lai’s detention was briefly flagged by US President Donald Trump in a recent conversation between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. As such, it is a question as to how Chinese authorities and their proxies in Hong Kong will rule on Lai’s detention. Lai is 77 years old.
At the rally in Taiwan, Taiwanese political activist Lee Ming-che criticized the KMT as attempting to make Taiwan into something like Macau. Lee was the first Taiwanese NGO to be detained in China, apparently over exchanges with Chinese friends about Taiwan’s experiences of democratization that were framed as subverting state power. Lee was held for over five years.
Specifically, Lee framed Macau as a place where the CCP had gradually infiltrated society culturally, to the extent that when Macau was handed over to Chinese control it already had substantive control over Macau society.
Lee was referring to controversial actions by newly elected KMT chair Cheng Li-wun, such as appearing at a rally memorializing a spy executed by the KMT for leaking secrets to China in 1950. Cheng has raised eyebrows with comments, such as an interview with German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle in which she referred to Vladimir Putin as a democratically elected leader and suggested that Ukraine had brought war on itself through ties with NATO. Similarly, Cheng has stated that she hopes to see Taiwanese “proud to be Chinese” and suggested that Taiwan and China should align to achieve civilizational greatness. Ironically, though Cheng clearly sees herself as Chinese, it would be unlikely that she would commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre in any way.
Still, one notes how Hong Kong’s fate has become decidedly post-truth in today’s Taiwan. The KMT campaigned in 2020 and 2024, claiming to oppose both “One Country, Two Systems” as well as Taiwanese independence, framing both as equal threats. And yet the ongoing events of Hong Kong do not figure in Taiwanese political discourse at present, much of the public has forgotten to keep its eyes on Hong Kong, to the extent that they would vote KMT in preceding elections.