Open Letter to Support the Democratic Movement in Hong Kong:

We are immigrant settlers, people of colour, and queer and trans people of colour writing from the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Indigenous Coast Salish peoples. We are members of the Asian diaspora, which is a continual movement of generations of people from our ancestral homelands in Asia to the Indigenous lands that we now inhabit. Living on the unceded land of Indigenous people means that we are participants in a process of colonialism, which grants us the privilege of freedom of speech, at the cost of the violent displacement of Indigenous people from their lands and the destruction of their language and culture.

As such, we have the responsibility of actively using our privilege to speak truth to power and to speak for justice. Today, we are using our voices to speak in support of the democratic movement in Hong Kong.

In February 2019, Carrie Lam, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong introduced a bill that, once passed, would allow for the extradition of people from Hong Kong to jurisdictions with which it does not currently have extradition agreements, such as Mainland China.

This bill is informally referred to as the China Extradition Bill, because many of its critics, including judges, students, academics, foreign governments and many others, argue that the true intent is to allow the Mainland Chinese government to extract persons of political interest from Hong Kong to face China’s flawed and politically-influenced judicial system.

Our relatives in Hong Kong enjoy their rights and freedoms today because of the “One Country, Two Systems” agreement established during the reunification of Hong Kong and China in 1997. Its purpose was to allow special regions like Hong Kong to retain its own government, economic, financial and judicial systems.

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Should the China Extradition Bill pass, this would be a major infringement on the agreement and could lead to a steep erosion of democracy, freedom of speech and other civil liberties in Hong Kong.

More than one million Hong Kong citizens — representing over one quarter of the city’s population — have publicly demonstrated against the bill and demanded that it be completely withdrawn. Unarmed protesters were met with heavy police suppression and violence. One young protester’s life has already been lost after falling from a building despite attempts to persuade him not to jump, and that is one too many.

In the eyes of Beijing, Hong Kong protesters who have openly expressed their opposition could now potentially be considered political dissidents. Some have already been detained.

We commend the bravery of the Hong Kong protesters and write this letter in support and solidarity. We call on Chief Executive Carrie Lam to immediately meet their demands.

As members of the Asian diaspora, many of us have deep personal, familial and cultural connections to Hong Kong and China. We fear that amendments to Hong Kong’s extradition laws would put our family members, our friends and ourselves in danger of political persecution.

We fear that the passing of the bill would mean that it will no longer be safe for us to visit Hong Kong and connect with our families. We fear that future generations of children of the diaspora will lose their connection to their families and ancestral homeland.

We are also wary of recent government efforts to erase the Cantonese language and Hong Kong people’s unique sense of cultural identity. We believe that a strong democratic process in Hong Kong and a high degree of freedom of speech and autonomy is crucial to the preservation of the unique language and culture of Hong Kong.

Many of us in the diaspora have personally experienced the deep pain of losing our connection to our heritage language and culture, and we do not wish this to be in the future for anyone. We stand in solidarity with all who fight to preserve, pass on and reinvigorate their heritage languages and cultures, especially Indigenous languages and cultures, which are under severe threat domestically and globally.

Though the Hong Kong protest movement is a demonstration against an anti-democratic bill, the protest itself is a powerful display of Hong Kong’s democratic spirit. It is part of the global movement of resistance against authoritarianism and the violation of human rights.

In this spirit of democracy and resistance, we denounce China’s long history of human rights abuses, including the genocide of Tibetans, the detainment of one million Muslims in concentration camps, the repression of non-Han Chinese minorities, environmental violations and the violent suppression of women’s rights activists, LGBTQ+ activists, labour activists and other critical voices that are vital to a healthy, democratic and accountable government.

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In addition, President Xi Jinping has recently reiterated that China will not be moving toward a goal of establishing a judiciary system that is independent from political influence. As such, the judiciary system of China serves as a tool of oppression rather than justice. Allowing for the extradition of persons to such an opaque and oppressive justice system cannot be seen as anything but an injustice. This is why the China Extradition Bill must be stopped.

The Hong Kong protest movement’s inclusive message of “各有各做” (“Do what you can”) has inspired us to do what we can as young members of the Asian diaspora in Canada.

Although we cannot stand beside our relatives in Hong Kong to protest the bill, we will use our voices to take an unequivocal stand against the China Extradition Bill.

We call for the immediate withdrawal of the bill and the release of detained protesters without charges. We call on the Asian diaspora to stand in solidarity with Hong Kong.

#AsianDiasporaForHK

Dora Ng, Jocelyn Fung, Clare Yow, and Leo Yu are young social change advocates from the Asian diaspora, and are based on the traditional, ancestral and unceded Coast Salish territory.

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