Hong Kong’s Free­dom Crum­bling

HONG KONG—For the past sev­eral months, Hong Kong has been seized by vi­o­lent protests, and the un­rest shows no sign of end­ing. On Fri­day, China in­voked what is known as the emer­gency law for the first time in more than 50 years; this al­lowed them to in­tro­duce an anti-mask law. Pro­test­ers have been wear­ing masks to pro­tect them­selves from tear gas and to pro­tect their iden­tity, and for both rea­sons China wants them to stop. Un­der the new anti-mask law, any­one caught wear­ing a mask will be or­dered to re­move it, and demon­stra­tors wear­ing masks can be ar­rested and face up to one year in jail. 

Some of the more rad­i­cal pro­test­ers have at­tacked Mass Tran­sit Rail­way sta­tions and other busi­nesses. Dur­ing clashes with po­lice, both sides typ­i­cally sus­tain mul­ti­ple in­juries as po­lice fire tear gas and rub­ber bul­lets and pro­test­ers throw bricks, fire­bombs and other ob­jects. Be­cause of this, Hong Kong’s trans­porta­tion sys­tem is ex­tremely lim­ited.    

Last week, po­lice used live bul­lets on pro­test­ers for the first time. On Tues­day they shot and wounded an 18-year-old who was al­legedly at­tack­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer and on Fri­day it was re­ported that a 14-year-old demon­stra­tor was shot in the leg. 

The vi­o­lence stems from pro­pos­als made in April of this year for a law that would al­low crim­i­nal sus­pects in Hong Kong to be ex­tra­dited to China. Protests be­gan in June and the bill was fi­nally with­drawn in Sep­tem­ber, but the protests have con­tin­ued as pro-democ­racy and anti-po­lice demon­stra­tions. 

Hong Kong’s cur­rent sit­u­a­tion is the re­sult of a tran­si­tion from ex­is­tence un­der Britain’s rule to be­com­ing a province of China. In 1984, af­ter be­ing leased to Britain for 99 years, Britain and China reached an agree­ment that re­turned Hong Kong to China in 1997.  

How­ever, as part of the agree­ment, China had to agree to al­low Hong Kong to main­tain many of their free­doms for a length of time. It was agreed that Hong Kong would ex­ist un­der a “one na­tion, two sys­tems” pol­icy. This means that Hong Kong was to en­joy "a high de­gree of au­ton­omy, ex­cept in for­eign and de­fense af­fairs" for 50 years. As a re­sult, Hong Kong has its own le­gal sys­tem, bor­ders and rights. 

This agree­ment will not end un­til 2047, but China is al­ready at­tempt­ing to strengthen their pres­ence and so­lid­ify their au­thor­ity. The en­su­ing ri­ots have led to great con­cerns for the fu­ture of Hong Kong.