After the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende was thrown off by a coup by General Pinochet on September 11, 1973, the US secretary of state in the 70s, Henry Kissinger (who is also a Nobel Peace laureate) said: “Chile should not be allowed to go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible.” In the 21st century, some new “Kissingers” can be found in Beijing who are not going to allow the people of Hong Kong to go democratic, because they are “irresponsible.”
To have a fair idea about the political situation of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), one should go through the history of this specialised region. Hong Kong, once an integral part of China, was annexed by the British forces after the Chinese force conceded a disgraceful defeat in the First Opium War in 1841 and was ruled by British rulers till 1997 almost uninterruptedly.
On July 1, 1997 the government of the UK transferred the sovereignty of Hong Kong to China, as the last crown colony of the former. Since then, Hong Kong – as a special administrative region of China – has been governed by a chief executive supported by the central government in Beijing.
Though the land was returned to the communist China, they distrusted the people of Hong Kong. For example, Article 23 of the Basic Law of the HKSAR grants the police force the right to access to their private property, under the reason of “safeguarding national security,” without any court warrant. Moreover, Beijing has frequently denied the right of the citizens of Hong Kong to practice the universal suffrage to elect a chief executive. Under a managed election, the inhabitants of Hong Kong had to choose their chief executive who was definitely from the pro-Beijing camp.
Amid public hue and cry that had initially escalated in 2003 for the reformation of the electoral system, the National People’s Congress of China made a move to democratise the system in 2014. The people of Hong Kong have consistently demanded the process of civil nomination for the elections in this autonomous region to preserve their right to vote for the candidates of their own choice.
But the reformation, initiated with a view to protecting the suffrage of the electorates of Hong Kong in the forthcoming Hong Kong chief executive election of 2017, ended up making the electoral process more flawed and partial than ever. The National People’s Congress of China declared on August 31, 2014 that Hong Kong residents can elect their next leader in 2017, but they will have to choose from a pool of only three candidates vetted by Beijing.
It means all the candidates participating in the 2017 election for choosing a chief executive to govern Hong Kong must be approved by a pro-Beijing committee. This completely undemocratic and unilateral decision by the central government agitated the people, especially the students of the universities who vehemently defied it. They have been protesting on the streets since September 22.
The economy of both Hong Kong and China is suffering due to the impasse. The protest has affected Hong Kong’s important commercial hub, forcing buses to be cancelled or diverted and some banks to close. Last month, profits made by the industrial companies in China declined for the first time in two years, as a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy deepens.
Amid the slowdown of the economy, the protesters rejected the call to go home by the central government. Michael Schuman, the business and economics correspondent of TIME based in China, argued that it is important to fix the political process of Hong Kong to ensure the economic success of the region and supported the idea of the pro-democracy protesters as the economic system of Hong Kong can only sustain under a full-fledged democratic process.
The leaders of Hong Kong confirmed that the government will launch a new round of talks on electoral reform with the central government. However, the possibility of finding a solution to this conundrum seems to be impossible as the Chinese authority, after crushing the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989, has repeatedly refused to comply with the demand of the protesters. Also, the riot police cracked down upon the protesters leaving many of them injured.
Moreover, China has warned other countries not to interfere while state-run media, including the People’s Daily, linked the protesters to “foreign anti-China forces’’ with alleged ties to the West.
Muhammad Ali, the legendary American boxer who has been an inspiration to many, once said: “You lose nothing when fighting for a cause.” These students in Hong Kong have locked themselves into a scuffle with the government of the world’s second-largest economy.
While the students of many other countries are refraining themselves from protesting against the wrong deeds of their government to ensure their selfish motives even if the fate of their country remains at stake, the students of Hong Kong are struggling to save their democracy because a nation of sheep begets a government of wolves. No matter what the protesters achieve from this movement, they will lose nothing at all.
