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Hong Kong:
Arrested for alleged nationwide safety crimes, Agnes Chow hails from a era of Hong Kong democracy activists who reduce their enamel in politics as youngsters and at the moment are being steadily silenced by China.
The media cameras flashed incessantly because the 23-year-old was led handcuffed from her condominium on Monday night by law enforcement officials with Hong Kong’s new nationwide safety unit.
She is without doubt one of the first opposition politicians to be arrested underneath Beijing’s new safety legislation — on a cost of “colluding with foreign forces” — and will resist life in jail if convicted.
For Chow, Monday’s arrest was the newest in an extended line of confrontations with China’s authoritarian leaders and their Hong Kong proxies.
Chow has described rising up in an apolitical Catholic family.
But on the age of 15 she joined a youth-led motion protesting towards plans to implement “moral and national education” in public faculties.
Students feared the plan would herald the sort of closely censored schooling used on China’s mainland.
They staged big sit-ins and the plan was finally shelved in a uncommon instance of protest forcing a Hong Kong authorities climb-down.
It was throughout these protests she met fellow teen activist Joshua Wong.
Two years later Wong, Chow and different college students have been key figures within the “Umbrella Movement” — 79 days of sit-ins and protests sparked by Beijing’s refusal to make good on its promise to in the future grant Hong Kongers common suffrage.
The protests have been peaceable, however not profitable.
Yet an entire new era of opposition politicians have been cast within the fires of that motion.
They would go on to grow to be a serious thorn within the aspect of Beijing because it tried to tighten its grip on the semi-autonomous monetary hub more and more chafing underneath Chinese Communist Party rule.
Big in Japan
Chow helped discovered the pro-democracy social gathering Demosisto alongside Wong, Nathan Law and different younger political leaders.
Unlike earlier Hong Kong pro-democracy events — which hailed from the Tiananmen-era era — the brand new events have been far more keen to confront Beijing and push for Hong Kongers to have a better say in how their metropolis is run.
The backlash was quick.
By 2018, Chow was one of many first Demosisto politicians barred from standing for native elections as a result of the social gathering advocated “self-determination”.
“The government is trying to get rid of all the political parties who are against them,” Chow advised a crowd of protesters shortly after the choice.
“But even though we are under pressure and are suppressed, we still insist on human rights and freedoms.”
One of her most profitable roles was bringing worldwide consideration to Hong Kong’s democracy motion.
The job was helped by her being fluent in English, Cantonese and Japanese, a language she taught herself by watching tv and on-line reveals.
She quickly constructed an enormous social media following in Japan specifically. Her Twitter account, which primarily publishes in Japanese, has 458,000 followers.
By Tuesday afternoon, #freeagnes was the highest trending hashtag on Twitter in Hong Kong, talked about in additional than 185,000 tweets.
Chow’s verified Facebook web page, which introduced her arrest on Monday evening, has 192,000 followers.
But lobbying is now deeply harmful in Hong Kong.
“Colluding with foreign forces” is without doubt one of the 4 acts focused by the vaguely worded safety legislation, which was imposed on Hong Kong on 30 June, its contents stored secret till it was enacted.
Disqualification of opposition politicians like Chow has now grow to be commonplace in Hong Kong.
Last month 12 pro-democracy figures have been barred as a result of officers deemed their political opinions unacceptable.
Infractions cited by the federal government within the disqualifications included criticism of the brand new nationwide safety legislation and posting protest slogans on social media.
Demosisto figures knew they’d grow to be prime targets of the safety legislation, and disbanded the social gathering hours earlier than its passage.
Nathan Law fled to Britain the identical week.
Both Chow and Wong have remained in Hong Kong regardless of the danger.
In instances unrelated to the nationwide safety legislation, the pair are additionally being prosecuted for collaborating in final 12 months’s big pro-democracy protests.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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