Twenty years ago, Fermi Wong embarked on her first protest against the government, expecting to be joined by only a few people. To her surprise, more than half a million people joined her and the show of people power kickstarted a movement for democracy. In July 2003, Hong Kong people took to the streets in response to the imminent passage of security legislation linked to Article 23 of the Basic Law. They feared the law would snuff out their civil liberties as residents of the former British colony that had reverted to Chinese sovereignty six years earlier.

Thanks to their efforts, the legislation was beaten off and the push for democracy gathered momentum in the next 15 years. However, in 2020, Beijing imposed the National Security Law (NSL) which effectively extinguished criticism and decimated civil rights and fundamental freedoms. Since then, someone has been arrested every four days for security offences and most have been denied bail. The current Chief Executive John Lee has promised to pass a local security law as early as the end of this year, which is likely to be harsher than the NSL.

For many years, Hong Kong was a safe harbour for people fleeing political persecution or seeking a better life from mainland China and other areas.Beijing saw it as a base for subversion and in April 1989, Hong Kong people overwhelmingly cast their lot with the pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, supporting the movement with donations until Chinese tanks rolled in and crushed the movement. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, codifying the civil liberties enjoyed by Hong Kong’s residents, was enacted in 1991.

In 2014, thousands of pro-democracy protesters engaged in Occupy Central and in 2019, 1 million people flooded the streets to oppose an extradition bill. Even after another 1 million protesters hit the streets, the bill was only withdrawn a few months later. Now, the Sedition Law is being used more frequently and an amendment to China’s counter-espionage law to cover online attacks, defections and other spying activities went into effect this week.

Faced with this reality, Wong left Hong Kong for the UK in 2021. She says “literally overnight the core values of our society were wiped out”. The events of the past twenty years have shown the power of people, and the fragility of democracy in Hong Kong. With the new security law looming, the future of the city is uncertain.