VANCOUVER—This week in Hong Kong, police employed heavy force on peaceful crowds, firing rubber bullets and tear gas on those gathered outside government headquarters to protest changes to an extradition law that would make it easier to send suspected criminals to China.

Protesters received rubber bullets in the face. Multiple shots of tear gas were fired. Police pushed people to the ground. As I streamed live coverage from Hong Kong at home in Vancouver, I was in deep shock, because many people were unarmed and protesting peacefully. Such brutality should result in Hong Kong police being charged with war crimes.

The situation already seems worse than the Umbrella Movement, when, on September 28, 2014, Hong Kong police fired 87 shots of tear gas on pro-democracy protesters. I fear these actions are increasingly making Hong Kong into a police state, where the police work for the government to suppress freedom, destroy rule of law and replace it with rule by law.

After the British government returned Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997 under the “one country, two systems” arrangement, Hong Kong was supposed to retain a high degree of autonomy until 2047, which included independent courts. Instead, Hong Kongers have seen their rights and core values come under attack: freedom, justice and democracy, which the mainland Chinese are willing to destroy at all costs.

Passing the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Ordinance is one of the many steps that would destroy the city I was born and raised in and love. The world must condemn the excessive force of the government since it violates basic human rights.

As a Hong Kong-Canadian business person with ties to Hong Kong and Vancouver, I am afraid that my actions or what I say about Hong Kong and China could result in criminal charges and, under this ordinance, I could be extradited to mainland China, and this could happen to anyone in the world.

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Anyone who is moving through the Hong Kong airport, or flying on an aircraft registered in Hong Kong, could be arrested and charged by the police and extradited to China, where there is no guarantee of a fair trial.

Hong Kong protesters have been risking their lives to fight the proposed extradition amendments since March 2019, because they fear the ordinance could be used by the Communist Party-ruled mainland government to control truth telling and free speech. Simply put, we worry that no one in the world who wants to visit Hong Kong or China would be able to say anything negative or give any constructive criticism about Hong Kong or China.

Hong Kong would never be the same city once the ordinance is passed into law, and it is a point of no return.

We have called Hong Kong home for many years and sadly, some of us have chosen to move away from the city, fearing for our safety and freedom when we see that Chinese police have sent agents around the world to kidnap people seen as threats and make them “confess their sins” on TV.

This was the case with Lee Bo, one of several Hong Kong booksellers who disappeared in 2016 and later turned up on mainland China. Bo appeared on state TV, urging Hong Kong and his family to drop his missing-persons case, and later insisted he went to China on his own accord. When he returned, he said he would no longer “publish or sell books that are sheer fabrication.”

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Many Hong Kongers, including myself, would prefer it was business as usual, but we have no choice but to stand up at this critical moment. On April 28, I joined 130,000 protesters in Hong Kong to demand that the ordinance be rescinded. On Sunday, I joined a rally with hundreds of people outside the Chinese consulate in Vancouver, showing our solidarity with the protesters in Hong Kong, because we all love the city.

Our fight matters not just to Hong Kongers, but even more to the world, especially Canada, in light of the illegal detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor on Dec. 10 in China. They were held for five months before being charged with purported espionage-related crimes, which is a form of political kidnapping in retaliation for the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver.

For myself, as a Hong Kong-Canadian who calls both Hong Kong and Canada home, I sincerely warn everyone that they could be arrested once the ordinance is passed into law. It could happen to you or to me. The claws of tyranny are not that far away and it warrants a united voice, from Canada and the world, to stand against it.

Abraham Wong works in real estate and he is also a musician. He moved to Vancouver from Hong Kong in 2003.

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