A patriots only legislature means that swathes of HK’s diverse society are now losing all their opportunities for advocacy. What made HK great appears, its people from diverse cultures and backgrounds is slowly being whittled away by the Beijing top down approach. Yet again Singapore and other cities like KL, Bangkok will profit from HK’s decline.
HKFP write
In the absence of opposition lawmakers, the city’s marginalised groups – from ethnic minorities to asylum seekers to domestic workers – say they have lost access to a crucial battleground for advocacy.
Leaning into the microphone on a mahogany desk in the Legislative Council, Lamia Sreya Rahman had exactly three minutes to make her case to the 30-odd lawmakers and government officers before her.
The Hong Kong-Bangladeshi, then a second-year university student, read out her carefully timed speech condemning the city’s police for allegedly racially profiling South Asians and Africans. Rahman was among the dozens of activists, academics and others at a public hearing that afternoon in January 2018, delivering statements to a subcommittee discussing issues related to Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities.
“When I was up there, I felt my audience was not just the people in the room,” Rahman, now 25, told HKFP. “I was speaking to the whole of Hong Kong.”
Such scenes, however, are rare at the Legislative Council today.
January marks one year since the current lawmakers were sworn in following Beijing-imposed electoral changes, which ensured that only those deemed “patriots” could run. Of the 90 new lawmakers, only one identifies as not being from the pro-establishment camp.
Full report
