Pro-democracy demonstrators have been campaigning in the Moor today, following the sentencing of 45 democracy activists in Hong Kong.
Protesters are angry over the sentences as well as the British government’s lack of response, with one accusing them of looking to “kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party”.
45 activists were sentenced on the 19th of November under China’s National Security Law, or NSL, which introduced crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign organisations.
In practice, these laws have been used to silence prominent advocates of Hong Kong’s independence from the Chinese government.
Another core issue for the protesters is the prosecution of Jimmy Lai, a British citizen and media tycoon who founded Next Digital and Apple Daily.
Lai’s media outlets widely covered pro-democracy protests in 2019 and 2020, leading to his arrest under the NSL in December 2020.
Protesters view the NSL as a violation of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, which outlined that Hong Kong’s social and economic systems would go unchanged for a span of fifty years.
So far, Keir Starmer has been reluctant to speak out against the sentences. The Prime Minister recently stressed the importance of maintaining a “strong UK-China relationship” at a meeting between the two at this year’s G20 conference.
Starmer also spoke of the importance of an open dialogue with Beijing over what he exclusively referred to as ‘differences’.
However, he has so far refused to openly condemn the sentencing, both at a press conference at the G20 and when called upon to do so in Parliament on the 19th of November
Asked about events in the region, organiser Clara Cheung said: “We are really angry that the UK government refuse to condemn the Hong Kong CCP government about killing freedom of expression and jailing all our friends in Hong Kong.
“We are inviting more locals in Sheffield to acknowledge it, we are also inviting them to write to their MP and tell the Labour government to keep British dignity in hand”.
