Freedoms wither in Hong Kong

One year after the enactment of a harsh national security law, citizens whose rights have been under attack for more than a decade find themselves even further away from democracy.

March 21, 2025

By Paul Eckert for RFA

• When did freedoms in Hong Kong start to decline?


• Which types of freedoms are under threat?


• What are the consequences of expressing one’s freedom?


• What is the future of freedom in Hong Kong?

When did freedoms in Hong Kong start to decline?

The Sino-British Joint Declaration signed on Dec. 19, 1984, in Beijing – and the 1990 Hong Kong mini-constitution known as the Basic Law – promised that Hong Kong would retain its legislative system, rights and freedom for 50 years, as a special administrative region of China, while the central government in Beijing controlled Hong Kong's foreign affairs. Beijing's retention of control over legal interpretation of the Basic Law, which had promised universal suffrage, planted the seed of future protests.

Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong who served from 1992-97, introduced a package of electoral reforms to enlarge the electorate and make voting for the Legislative Council more democratic.

In response, Beijing set up mechanisms and established a Provisional Legislative Council that undid Patten's electoral changes, resuming appointed seats to local bodies and narrowing the voting franchise through a system of nine functional constituencies.

Lack of progress on universal suffrage leading to the territory's first mass demonstrations – known as the Umbrella Movement or Occupy Hong Kong in 2014. The suffrage question also lurked behind demonstrations against an extradition law that drew 1.7 million people to the streets in August 2019 for protests that were stifled and later resulted in draconian security laws.

Which types of freedoms are under threat?

Freedom of speech was gutted by Beijing’s imposition of the National Security Law, or NSL, on the territory nearly one year ago. Before the law, Hong Kong was still home to a dynamic and pluralistic media scene, despite years of growing pressure, and its online spaces were largely uncensored.

The forced closure of the popular pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper in mid-2021 is emblematic of the media crackdown under the NSL. Apple Daily shut down its website, online television channels and social media accounts after an unprecedented police raid and the arrests of its chief editor, newsroom staff, and executives at Apple’s parent company, Next Digital.

Freedom House says the Chinese and Hong Kong governments now are effectively applying the Communist-run mainland’s model of information management to extinguish freedom of expression.

Creative freedoms also took a hit across the board – cinema, music, art and book publishing – in the once bustling hive of unfettered creativity on China’s doorstep.

The Hong Kong government in 2021 amended guidelines for the board of film censors, requiring them "consider whether the exhibition of a film would be contrary to the interests of national security." Films on sensitive topics, including one on the 2019 protests, have been banned, and Hong Kong filmmakers are increasingly showing their works at festivals abroad to avoid falling afoul of the NSL.

The Hong Kong government has banned the popular pro-democracy protest song “Glory to Hong Kong”, and threatened to prosecute anyone who performed, broadcast or published it, forcing streaming platforms to drop it. Also banned was an explosive track by Hong Kong rapper JB cursing the Hong Kong police force for its violence against protesters in 2019.

Art was given no quarter under the new security regime, as Danish sculptor Jens Galschiøt learned when his work "Pillar of Shame,” which commemorates the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, was seized by authorities. He was scolded by authorities for seeking to endanger national security with "activities under the pretexts of ‘peaceful advocacy,’ ‘artistic creations’ and so forth."

Hong Kong's Leisure and Cultural Services Department in 2023 began removing hundreds of books from the shelves of the city's public libraries, including books referencing the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, in what some called a "war on libraries." Librarians were ordered to ensure nothing in their collections could run afoul of national security law bans on public criticism of both the local government and the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

Education - An annual Academic Freedom Index for 2023 produced by Germany's FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg University report placed Hong Kong now in the bottom 20% of countries and territories for academic freedom, with sharply declining scores for "institutional autonomy" and "campus integrity" reflecting more political interference in decision-making and more security measures on campuses.

The German findings matched those published in 2024 by the Hong Kong Democracy Council and New York-based group Human Rights Watch, which warned that the territory's students and faculty "now have to tread carefully to avoid retribution for what they teach, research, and publish, and even with whom they associate.”

Hong Kong was included in a campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to step up "patriotic education" in schools, universities and religious institutions, and Hong Kong's Education Bureau criticized the city's schoolchildren for their "weak" singing of China's national anthem at flag-raising ceremonies that are now compulsory as part of patriotic "national security" education from kindergarten through to universities.

Hong Kong universities were forced to cut their ties with student unions and the Hong Kong government has ordered teachers and students to inform on each other over comments seen as "endangering national security" under the NSL.

Hong Kong police have ordered surveillance cameras to be installed in school and university classrooms and public spaces, and demanded other upgrades such as facial recognition and other high-tech access systems.

What are the consequences of expressing one’s freedom?

The imposition of the National Security Law in mid-2020 brought waves of arrests of prominent pro-democracy figures.

Pro-democracy media magnate Jimmy Lai, 77, has spent more than 1,500 days behind bars since his arrest in December 2020. The founder of the now-closed Apple Daily, a Chinese-language tabloid known for criticism of Beijing, pleaded not guilty on Jan. 2 to “sedition” and “collusion” under the security law.

In a separate trial last year, 47 former pro-democracy lawmakers and opposition activists were jailed for conspiracy to commit subversion over their involvement in pre-election primaries held in 2020 before the Hong Kong general election. Most had already been in jail for three years.

Academic and activist Benny Tai received 10 years in jail, reduced from 15 for pleading guilty, the longest term to be meted out under the five-year-old NSL.

In October, authorities vowed to keep pursuing thousands of people arrested for their part in the city’s 2019 pro-democracy protests, rejecting suggestions that charges against some 6,000 people arrested but not yet charged could be allowed to lapse. Police made more than 10,000 arrests during and after the 2019 protests.

A month earlier, a Hong Kong court sentenced two leading journalists from Stand News, a now-defunct online news site, to a collective 35 months in prison for conspiring to publish seditious materials.

Many facing charges have fled overseas, where 13 of the most prominent activists now have bounties on their heads. Hong Kong activists have fled to the United Kingdom or have made new lives in the United States, Canada, Australia and Germany.

What is the future of freedom in Hong Kong?

Rejecting the idea of amnesty for 2019 protesters, Secretary for Security Chris Tang said it "would be tantamount to legalizing the illegal" to fail to pursue charges against thousands arrested.

The NSL and Hong Kong's Article 23 have brought tighter restrictions on freedom of speech, assembly, and the media. The way these tools have been deployed to silence dissent and destroy pro-democracy groups points to further crackdowns on political activists and opposition figures. Behind Hong Kong is a Chinese central government expected to wield growing influence on Hong Kong augurs for tougher measures against protest or public expression.

Many independent media outlets have closed and press freedom has declined dramatically in every major international survey. Unclear rules about legally acceptable political criticisms have spurred media self-censorship, and fear of prosecution has made people afraid to discuss sensitive political or legal matters with journalists.