Hong Kong group supporting mainland China lawyers to disband after police demand information citing national security law

China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group says it will dissolve this month and has already started voluntary liquidation procedure

But the group does not say what information police were seeking or whether it complied with the request

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Members of the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group hold a protest in 2017 over the treatment of the profession on the mainland. Photo: Dickson Lee

Published: 8:22pm, 21 Sep 2021Updated: 3:30pm, 22 Sep 2021

A Hong Kong group founded to support human rights lawyers in mainland China has announced it will disband, a decision coinciding with a deadline for the organisation to provide police with information requested on national security grounds.

The China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group will be the latest in a run of Hong Kong civic bodies to dissolve following Beijing’s imposition of a national security law on the city last year.

Two prominent opposition-leaning bodies – the Professional Teachers’ Union and the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions – have ceased operations and started the process to dissolve respectively in the past month amid warnings from authorities and attacks from pro-Beijing mouthpieces over alleged national security violations.

The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which organises the city’s annual candlelight vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, is also set to vote on its disbandment on Saturday.

Hong Kong’s national security police last month wrote to the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group demanding its leaders submit relevant information as requested.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, also the deadline for submission, the group said it had decided to disband and had already replied to the force’s letter of inquiry dated August 25.

“The China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group has decided to dissolve in September 2021 and has already activated the voluntary liquidation procedure. Directors of the [group] are going to resign from their directorships soon,” it added.

The statement did not reveal the nature of the information they were asked to divulge or whether they had complied with the request.