China is urging Hong Kong to pass a national security law. Doing so would raise tensions
biggest shake-up of her cabinet since an explosion of unrest last year, Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, tried to sound confident. A major goal of the reshuffle on April 22nd, she said, was to “help Hong Kong get out of this difficult situation as soon as possible”.
Since June 2019, when protests erupted over a since-abandoned extradition law, more than 7,000 people have been arrested for taking part in the riots and unauthorised demonstrations that roiled the territory for the rest of the year. But no round-up by the police has caused as much shock as the one on April 18th, during which 15 of Hong Kong’s best-known campaigners for democracy were charged with promoting, organising and joining illegal demonstrations.
In response to suggestions that those arrested had been singled out unfairly, Hong Kong’s security bureau insisted that everyone was “equal before the law”. But the simultaneous targeting of so many well-known figures, including several other former legislators, showed that this was an unusual operation. Some, like Mr Lee and Ms Ng, had never been charged before.
It began on April 14th when the central government’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong, along with the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, which is based in Beijing, accused opposition legislators of abusing their oaths of office by using “malicious filibustering” to “paralyse” the Legislative Council. Their complaints relate to the work of a committee that decides on the timing of debates about bills.
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