The
Hong Kong pro-democracy group that organised three decades of vigils commemorating the victims of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square massacre has voted to disband in the face of China’s sweeping clampdown on dissent. The Hong Kong Alliance was one of the most prominent symbols of the city’s former political plurality, and its dissolution on Saturday is the latest illustration of how quickly
China is remoulding the business hub in its own authoritarian image.
After announcing the decision to disband, a representative of the alliance read out a letter from their chairman Lee Cheuk-yan,
who is in jail. “A regime cannot take away the people’s memory and conscience,” the letter read. “The beliefs of the Hong Kong Alliance will be passed on in the hearts of Hongkongers.”
Many of the alliance’s leaders are in custody for taking part in the city’s democracy movement.
