A vast campaign is underway, mobilizing more than a thousand police officers: 47 men and 8 women were arrested on the 6th and 2 more men on the 7th. Only a portion of them could be released on bail.
Among those arrested on the 6th were
– Carol Ng, president of the central labour union HKCTU,
– Winnie Yu, president of the HAEA (public health staff labour union),
– Lau Hoi-man of the labour union Hong Kong Allied Health Professionals and Nurses Association.
Police simultaneously searched 72 premises and seized equipment from four of them.
This is the first major raid carried out under the National Security Act, drafted in Beijing and enacted in Hong Kong on June 30.
This liberticidal law gives the possibility of arresting and sending to prison for many years any person displeasing the authorities.
The “crime” of those arrested is to have wanted to use their constitutional right to run for the legislative elections, initially scheduled for September 6. At the last moment, these elections were postponed for a year by the government, which feared losing the elections.
To want to use the right to run for elections is for the power of Beijing and its Hong Kong puppets synonymous with “subversion”, “terrorism”, “collusion with foreign forces”, etc.
All this says a lot about their conception of democracy, as well as their refusal to take into account the demands expressed by the vast majority of Hong Kongers who took to the streets for more than half of the year 2019.
The International Labour Network of Solidarity and Struggles expresses its full solidarity with all those arrested.
It demands the immediate release of all of them, and the absence of prosecution against them.