Activists overseas launch new ‘Hong Kong Charter’ aimed at keeping up pressure on Beijing

The charter’s founding signatories, some of whom are on the run from arrest warrants back home, regard it as their ‘responsibility to protect Hong Kong’s autonomy’, Nathan Law says

While the charter does not call for independence, it states ‘Hongkongers shall have the right to determine the future and affairs’ of the city

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Nathan Law is one of eight overseas Hong Kong activists to lend his name to a new charter aimed at keeping up pressure on Beijing. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 4:24pm, 15 Mar 2021Updated: 1:13am, 20 Apr 2021

Hong Kong activists living overseas, including some on the run from arrest warrants back home, are launching a bid to unite the city’s diaspora and continue their campaign against the government and Beijing.

A group of eight, led by fugitive ex-lawmaker Nathan Law Kwun-chung, who is sought by police on suspicion of breaking the national security law after he fled the city last year, urged overseas Hongkongers to sign an online “2021 Hong Kong Charter”.

The document released on Sunday calls for the “liberation” of the city and the end of China’s one-party rule – slogans which would now run afoul of the security law banning acts of subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.

The document also urges the international community to “stand together, to safeguard democratic values under the threat of totalitarianism”.

The group said Hong Kong people had been stripped of the freedoms of expression and thought under the Beijing-imposed security law, and that an electoral overhaul currently being finalised by the central government was just another example of political repression.

Law, a poster boy for Hong Kong’s opposition who is seeking political asylum in Britain after fleeing the city ahead of the enactment of the security law, urged people to sign the charter online to show support for their cause.