November 30, 2016
The legislator Lau Siu-lai addressed protesters outside the High Court in Hong Kong this month.
Jerome Favre/European Pressphoto Agency
In a possible escalation of a campaign against a separatist movement, the Hong Kong government appears ready to take steps to bar a third opposition politician from the semiautonomous Chinese city’s legislature.
The Justice Department said the city government would issue proceedings against the legislator, Lau Siu-lai, who was sworn into office this month. The Justice Department declined to be specific, but pro-democracy politicians said it was most likely because Ms. Lau had read her oath of office very slowly, in an apparent act of protest.
The move against Ms. Lau, a teacher who participated in 2014 protests for freer local elections but who has not called for separation from China — as had the two legislators who were denied their seats on the Legislative Council — has raised concerns about a broader crackdown on opposition politicians, beyond separatists.
Nathan Law, a prominent student leader in the 2014 protests who, at 23, is the youngest-ever member of the legislature, said the government had “declared war” against all pro-democracy parties.
“The government is trying to take us down one by one,” he said. “It’s full-blown authoritarian suppression.”
The High Court barred the two pro-independence politicians from office after they altered the words of the oath during their swearing-in last month, pledging allegiance to the “Hong Kong nation.”
Ms. Lau, in contrast, read the oath word for word, though extremely slowly. The legislature first accepted, then rejected, her oath in October, but she was sworn in this month after she reread it normally.
More than 10 other pro-democracy legislators used the swearing-in ceremony on Oct. 12 to make theatrical political statements.
Yau Wai-ching, one of the two disqualified legislators, along with Sixtus Leung, declared her allegiance to a “Hong Kong nation” at the ceremony. Mr. Law prefaced his oath by saying he would “never serve a regime that murders its own people,” a reference to the required pledge of allegiance to “the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.”
The move to bar Ms. Lau would be the first since the Chinese government’s rare intervention this month, when it ruled that anyone in public office would be disqualified if he or she took the oath “in a manner which is not sincere or not solemn” and that “no arrangement shall be made for retaking the oath.”
Hong Kong, a former British colony, was returned to Chinese rule under the promise of high autonomy as well as independent judicial and legislative powers, and the intervention by Beijing has been criticized by many as overreaching.
“I don’t know if I’d be their next target,” said Eddie Chu, a pro-democracy legislator who concluded his own oath of office with calls for “democracy and self-determination.”
“Hong Kong is lawless now,” he said.
