Our Manifesto

Why we fight for Hongkongers’ Inalienable Right to Self-Determination

In UN General Assembly Resolution 1514, the post-war international community confirmed the right to self-determination for all non-self-governing territories (NSGT); Colonies like Hong Kong were afforded the right to freely determine future association with their suzerain, loosening the shackles to their economic, social and cultural development.

In the 1970s, the CCP government in Beijing seized China’s UN Security Council seat. Straightaway, they wrote to the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation (C24), demanding that Hong Kong and Macao be removed from the list of NSGTs despite them being colonies of Britain and Portugal respectively. The Chair of C24 acceded to the CCP’s request in the C24’s report to the General Assembly in 1972. The issue of Hong Kong was only given a brief mention in the report of 1198 pages. This report was expeditiously accepted by the General Assembly in 1972 as Resolution 2908 on decolonisation; thereby, a simple oversight resulted in Hong Kong’s removal from the NSGT list and stripping the territory of its right to self-determination.

Soon thereafter in the 80s, Britain and China began negotiations on the future of Hong Kong. During which Hongkongers’ views were not solicited and the territory excluded from participating in discussions on its own future. The Sino-British Joint Declaration was duly signed and registered with the UN, without any input from the people of Hong Kong. It was promised in the Joint Declaration that Hong Kong’s unique way of life would ‘remain unchanged for 50 years’, and that the rights and freedoms hitherto enjoyed by the people of Hong Kong, including the freedoms to speech, publish, protest and association, would continue to be guaranteed after the Handover. This was confirmed in what was then promulgated by the Chinese government as the Hong Kong Basic Law, which codified the principles of ‘One Country, Two Systems’, ‘Hong Kong People Ruling Hong Kong’ and ‘A High Degree of Autonomy’. Hongkongers had no choice but to accept this outcome.

A flicker of democracy before the Handover

As the Handover approached in the early 90s, the British Hong Kong authorities began a series of democratic reforms, abolishing appointed and official seats in the Legislative Council (LegCo) and expanding the number of democratically elected legislators. The 1995 LegCo elections were the most democratic in Hong Kong’s history. Democratically elected legislators, drawn from directly elected constituencies, elected district boards and functional constituencies with a widely expanded franchise, took up two thirds of all seats in the LegCo. For the first time, the political system was engineered to represent the people’s views.

Alas, this blossoming of democracy was not to last. On the day of the Handover, these democratic reforms were summarily repealed and the LegCo produced by the most democratic franchise in Hong Kong’s history, dissolved. In its place, the CCP installed a wholly unelected Provisional LegCo. It became clear that the bright flash of democratisation was but a flicker. Disappointed in this development, Hongkongers instead took heart in the promise that democracy would come in the form of dual universal suffrage for the territory’s Chief Executive and Legislative Council, as enshrined in the Basic Law.

The struggle for democracy under Chinese sovereignty

After the Handover, Hongkongers organised numerous peaceful, rational and non-violent protests, to make their voices heard and push for the implementation of democracy. But the CCP had other plans for Hong Kong; In an effort to dilute the local culture, they encouraged mass migration from mainland China into Hong Kong and implemented a policy to replace the local language Cantonese with Mandarin in the school curriculum. In 2003, they also attempted to use the much democratically-weakened LegCo to force through local legislation for Article 23 of the Basic Law, which was designed to weaken Hongkongers’ freedom of expression. This prompted 500,000 ordinary citizens to take to the streets on 1 July, the anniversary day of the Handover. This mass reaction forced the government to give way, abandoning the bill. Since then, Hongkongers have taken to the streets every year on 1 July to demand the CCP to make true their promise of democracy in the form of dual genuine universal suffrage.

A new age of struggle amidst oppression

Beginning in the early 2010s, the Chinese Hong Kong authorities began accelerating the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy, encroaching on Hong Kong’s unique way of life. The regime attempted to introduce ‘National Education’– a vector for Chinese propaganda and historical revisionism – into Hong Kong schools, hoping to brainwash Hong Kong’s youth into blind adherence to the will of the Chinese Communist Party. Students and pupils came out in protest, surrounding the LegCo complex, stirring up media attention and ultimately forcing the government to abandon these plans, but the CCP was not to give up.

Alarmed by Hongkongers’ unwillingness to bend, the CCP regime accelerated their efforts to gradually erode Hong Kong’s autonomy and civil rights. In 2014, after years of misleading Hongkongers that they would eventually implement dual genuine universal suffrage, the CCP decided that full democracy for Hong Kong was not quite palatable. The ‘831’ decision of the Chinese National People’s Congress Standing Committee proposed a hollowed-out and disempowered form of ‘suffrage’. Under the plans candidates wishing to get onto the ballot papers would have to win the support of a ‘Nomination Committee’ controlled by Beijing. This provoked popular outrage in Hong Kong and gave birth to the Umbrella Movement–a peaceful, 79-day occupation of arterial roads across Hong Kong to try to make the regime listen. But their efforts were to prove futile, as the movement fizzled out with the arrest of its main leaders and many participants. The regime’s refusal to make good with the people’s democratic aspirations forced Hongkongers to question what they’ve believed in for decades – that peaceful, rational and non-violent protests can bring about democracy.

The Lunar New Year of 2016 was a turning point in Hong Kong history. The Chinese Hong Kong government sent armed police officers to suppress the long-enduring local tradition of street hawking on the eve and into the early hours of the Lunar New Year. This blatant disrespect for the local culture provoked the 2016 Mong Kok clashes. For the first time in Hong Kong’s recent history, peaceful demonstration made way for more radical and militant forms of protest in the context of widespread disenchantment and disillusionment as hopes for gradual reforms waned. In response, the Chinese Hong Kong authorities arrested and charged protesters with rioting for the first time since the 1967 pro-Communist riots.

In the LegCo elections later that year, the authorities began their practice of banning candidates from the ballot paper, and when that failed to achieve their desired electoral outcomes, disqualifying elected legislators from office. This practice, which was to become the norm, further eroded what limited political freedom Hongkongers once enjoyed.

The Revolution of Our Times

In 2019, under the pretext of facilitating the extradition of a Hong Kong suspect in a murder case in Taiwan, the Chinese Hong Kong government attempted to force the Extradition Law Amendment Bill (ELAB) through LegCo. This legislation would have paved the way for the extradition of Hongkongers not only to Taiwan, but also to mainland China, where the Chinese Communist Party has absolute control over the legal system. The Bill was carefully worded so as to allow the Secretary for Justice (who is a political appointee of the CCP regime) to unilaterally ‘certify’ that the evidence for a case is admissible without judicial oversight, thereby giving the Hong Kong Chinese government power to extradite to China anyone deemed a ‘criminal’ by the CCP regime, this would have dismantled the ‘firewall’ between Hong Kong and China’s legal systems, subjecting Hongkongers to politically-motivated prosecutions common in China.

On 9 June 2019, more than a million Hongkongers took to the street to peacefully protest against the ELAB, but the Hong Kong government refused to heed the demands of the people. This forced Hongkongers to surround the LegCo complex to prevent the bill’s third reading. That same night, the government spokesperson officially classified all protesters as ‘rioters’, liable to ten years’ imprisonment.

Pushed beyond our breaking point, we Hongkongers intensified our resistance. We formulated the ‘Five Demands’, and took to the streets every day for six months to force the regime to listen. This unprecedented mass movement forced the Chinese Hong Kong authorities to finally give up on the facade of ‘One Country, Two Systems’. Forgoing any pretence of respecting human rights, the use of lawfully proportionate force, or accountable governance, the regime responded to the movement with a violent crackdown, serving only to unite Hongkongers behind our shared struggle.

The death of ‘Two Systems’

In 2020, the CCP imposed the National Security Law on Hong Kong, completely bypassing Hong Kong’s LegCo. Now the Chinese Hong Kong authorities no longer had to rely on archaic colonial laws to persecute pro-democracy activists and protesters. With political crimes openly written on the statute books, hundreds of dissidents and ordinary citizens alike have been convicted for political crimes. Many more continue to be held on remand, with a trial date years ahead and without the possibility of bail. Any meaningful political opposition to the regime, let alone demands for democracy, is no longer possible.

The regime’s efforts to criminalise thought did not stop with the National Security Law. In 2024, the Chinese Hong Kong government once again pushed for legislating for Article 23 of the Basic Law. This time, the Article 23 bill was much wider in scope, giving the regime sweeping powers to enforce their will on the people of Hong Kong. Without any meaningful public consultation under an atmosphere of intense white terror, the legislation was rammed through LegCo–now a rubber-stamp legislature. The proclamation of Article 23 hammered in the final nail in the coffin for Hong Kong’s autonomy, freedom, democracy, rule of law and human rights.

In light of this, The ICHKA is committed to advocating for the realisation of the right to self-determination in Hong Kong as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to cast off the Chinese Communist Party’s long-term oppression of the Hong Kong people. We will work to ensure that the Chinese regime is held internationally accountable for their violation of their international and domestic legal obligations to the Hong Kong people. We will also carry out political education work to facilitate dialogue and discourse for the liberation of Hong Kong, nurture political leaders for Hong Kong, foster a robust sense of belonging to the Hongkonger identity worldwide, and actualise the right to self-determination in Hong Kong.