BEIJING: President Xi Jinping on Monday met the newly appointed leader of Hong Kong, John Lee, telling him that he has the full support of the central authorities and lauding him for “safeguarding national security”.
Lee, who travelled to Beijing on Saturday to meet the country’s top leadership, oversaw the crackdown on the democracy movement in Hong Kong, which Beijing administers as a special administrative region under the “one country, two systems” mechanism.
Xi’s meeting with Lee on Monday coincided with the cancellation of church services to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown when the Chinese government deployed People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops and tanks to stamp out a student-led movement for political reform, killing an unknown number of civilians. The annual Catholic masses were one of the last ways for Hong Kongers to come together publicly to remember the deadly clampdown in Beijing on June 4, 1989.
“We find it very difficult under the current social atmosphere,” said Reverend Martin Ip, chaplain of the Hong Kong Federation of Catholic Students, one of the organisers.
“Our bottom line is that we don’t want to breach any law in Hong Kong,” he told AFP.
In 2020, Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law in Hong Kong to clamp down on pro-democracy demonstrations, which rocked the financial centre for several weeks.
Following the implementation of the law, candlelit vigils to commemorate the June 4 Tiananmen crackdown were banned.
During his meeting with Lee, Xi praised the Beijing loyalists-driven new electoral system in Hong Kong, which he said, “played a decisive role in implementing the principle of ‘patriots administering Hong Kong,’ ensuring the position of Hong Kong people as their own masters, and facilitating a good environment in which all sectors of society work together for Hong Kong’s development.”
“I believe that the administration of the new government will definitely bring forth a new atmosphere, and compose a new chapter in Hong Kong’s development,” Xi said, according to the official news agency Xinhua.
Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 with the promise that wide-ranging individual rights would be protected.
Pro-democracy activists and rights groups, however, said freedoms have been eroded, in particular since China imposed the new national security law after months of at times violent protests in 2019.
Last March, China approved sweeping changes to Hong Kong’s electoral system as well, tightening Beijing’s control over the city and cutting down democratic representation in the legislature.
