#Beijing issues death warrant for Hong Kong freedom

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Protesters gather at a shopping mall in Central Hong Kong during a pro-democracy protest against Beijing’s national security law.
AP

China’s puppet legislature finally passed the long-feared Hong-Kong-crackdown law — unanimously, of course. The city’s people had barely an hour to read it before it took effect at midnight on July 1.

Each of four categories of new offenses can lead to life imprisonment. The South China Morning Post’s Stuart Lau broke the details down on Twitter, concluding, “I’m wondering if the above tweets amount to fueling anyone’s hatred against any governments.”

Hong Kongers risk sentences starting at three years for any effort to disrupt China’s one-party rule, including by pleading for foreign support, as well as for trying to seriously interfere with policymaking that would further kill the liberties that Beijing promised to preserve through 2047. And for trying to “manipulate or disrupt” election results or “fuel hatred” of the Beijing regime.

Or, as Agence France-Presse’s Xinqi Su put it: “National-security police and agents can basically do whatever they feel necessary to ‘suspects.’  ”

The pro-democracy Demosisto Party disbanded instantly — in part because its leader, Joshua Wong Chi-fung, lobbied US politicians to pass last year’s Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. Also “voluntarily” closing was the pro-independence Hong Kong National Front. The island’s citizens are deleting their Twitter accounts in droves.

It’s a dark night for freedom.