Five years since police brutality at Prince Edward Station

Stop police brutality!
Free all political prisoners!
Solidarity with democratic & labour activists!
Sanctuary & equality for everyone fleeing tyranny!

Protests and meetings around the world today are marking five years since Hong Kong police savagely and indiscriminately battered and pepper-sprayed democracy protesters and bystanders at Prince Edward MTR station in Hong Kong. A representative of our campaign is speaking at the rally in London - here is our message to the protests:

We’re here today to remember the brutal violence by the Hong Kong police five years ago, and to stand up for the cause of democracy in Hong Kong which the police tried to batter and pepper-spray into submission.

Since that day, the Hong Kong authorities, backed by Beijing, have further suffocated civil society and the labour movement. Most opposing parties and independent trade unions have been forced to disband. So many comrades are in prison or forced into exile.

And let’s not forget that the old British colonial regime gave the CCP many of the tools it is using to oppress Hongkongers. Britain handed Hong Kong over to China without ever consulting Hong Kong people.

Britain handed over repressive laws against protest, trade unions and dissent which are used to this day - CTU General Secretary Lee Cheuk-yan is in prison under British-written anti-protest laws. Britain set up and handed over the very police force that committed the attack at Prince Edward Station. And Britain handed over an undemocratic government system in favour of the rich and powerful, to sustain neoliberal capitalism against the interests of ordinary Hong Kong people.

All of this has been used by the pro-Beijing Hong Kong Government, together with its own new repressive laws.
So let’s have no nostalgia for the old colonial governors - they too are responsible.

Yet despite all this power, the CCP cannot completely extinguish the movements it hates and fears. Our brave friends in the League of Social Democrats continue to protest outside the regime’s rigged trials. Workers like flight attendants and couriers continue to organise for their rights, above and below ground. On the mainland too, people continue to defy repression - from Tibetans resisting the seizure of their land to Chinese gig economy workers demanding dignity at work.

So we have to step up and keep up solidarity with all the democrats, workers, feminists and oppressed people who are resisting tyranny. They keep standing up, and we must stand up with them.

We stand with Selina Cheng, sacked by the Wall Street Journal - a western corporation - for the “crime” of being elected leader of a Hong Kong journalists’ trade union and advocating press freedom. We demand freedom for those prosecuted and imprisoned for organising democracy primaries and protests, like union leaders Winnie Yu and Carol Ng, and for political prisoners on the mainland like feminist Sophia Huang Xueqin, and all the Uyghurs interned simply for their culture.

And we also need to keep fighting to make the UK into a haven of safety and equality for anyone fleeing tyranny and oppression. There are still Hongkongers who want to escape Hong Kong but who don’t qualify under the BNO scheme or cannot afford its outrageous fees.

And others who need sanctuary, from the mainland, Tibet or the Uyghur region, or the many other oppressive states around the world, don’t even have the limited protection of the BNO scheme. They need asylum, but the UK now offers almost no safe and legal routes for asylum applicants, and those who do manage to get here face brutal treatment, being warehoused in camps and barges, discriminated against and denied essential human rights.

So we need to demand the UK government offers safe passage, sanctuary and equality to everyone who needs to escape oppressive and tyrannical regimes like the CCP. We need to challenge the politicians who pose like friends of democracy and freedom, yet oppress and attack the victims of tyrants who seek safety here. The record of the last Conservative government was appalling, including hypocrites like Iain Duncan Smith, supposedly against tyranny, yet viciously anti-refugee. And the leaders of the new Labour government are not much better on this.

Worse, all their anti-refugee politics has helped embolden the far-right racist mobs that launched shocking attacks on mosques and refugee accommodation recently. Those mobs pose a violent threat to all minorities, migrants and trade unionists, including Hong Kongers. We can’t always rely on police to protect us, since in Britain too police enact racist violence and enforce anti-protest laws.

Instead we have to organise and stand with each other, especially in our trade unions, to fight against racism and for change, to support one another, and to ensure that refugees from tyranny are welcome here! From here to Hong Kong, we can only rely on ourselves, on grassroots solidarity of ordinary people.

Yet we have hope, because solidarity is a weapon that can change the world.