Yau Wai-ching, 25, has been barred from taking her place in parliament after her outspoken attack on Chinese rule

A 25-year-old pro-independence activist who has been disqualified from Hong Kong’s parliament has said she has no regrets over the crisis unleashed by her decision to defy Beijing.

Yau Wai-ching, one of the leading figures of the Youngspiration party, became the youngest woman to be elected to the former colony’s legislative council in early September.



But her decision, along with fellow Youngspiration activist Sixtus “Baggio” Leung, to criticise China during a dramatic swearing-in ceremony last month, has sparked a bitter political row.



On Tuesday, one week after Beijing took highly controversial steps to stop the pair taking office by tightening up the rules around the swearing-in ceremony, Hong Kong’s high court officially disqualified the two activists from assuming their positions in a move that is likely to provoke further protests.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yau Wai-ching holds the ruling banning her from taking her seat in the legislative council outside the high court in Hong Kong on Tuesday. Photograph: Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty

Speaking to the Guardian just before the ruling, Yau said she stood by her actions.



“We didn’t do anything wrong,” she said in an interview in the parliamentary office she must now vacate. “This is just what China must do to maintain their dictatorship, so we don’t think it is our fault.”

On Tuesday, Yau told reporters outside Hong Kong’s high court that the ruling was not fair, “but it was expected”. She said: “[Since] the court adopted such measures to strip us of our lawmaker qualifications, I think you all have an idea what kind of society this is.”



As recently as two years ago, Yau would never have anticipated playing a key role in one of the most severe political crises since Hong Kong was returned to Chinese hands in 1997.

The pro-independence politician said her civil servant parents disapproved of television, so she turned to books. She studied Chinese classics at university where she penned her own versions, featuring homosexual relationships, of imperial love stories.

After university, Yau got a job processing applications at the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

What was the umbrella revolution in Hong Kong? Hong Kong’s financial centre and legislative complex were occupied for 79 days of street protests in 2014 after China released a plan to elect the territory's leader that was seen as unacceptable by the pro-democracy camp. The movement sparked newfound political involvement among the city’s youth, which saw six candidates backing independence or greater self-determination elected to Hong Kong’s legislative council in September 2016.

The movement's name was inspired by the first night of protests when citizens used umbrellas to shield themselves from pepper spray and tear gas deployed by police in a failed attempt to clear the streets.



It was only in 2012 that she had her first brush with politics, taking part in marches against proposed reforms to Hong Kong’s education system that critics said was a Communist party attempt to brainwash the city’s youth.



Yau’s full immersion into the world of politics came during the 79-day umbrella movement street occupation, in 2014, in which tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents took to the streets to demand greater democratic rights.

Yau recalls looking on and feeling compelled to act as students, some of them still in secondary school, attempted to storm the legislature. “I thought I should take part instead of those students, they shouldn’t have to bear such a big responsibility. Adults like us should take more of a part.”

When the umbrella protests ended, Yau decided to throw herself into conventional politics, first running unsuccessfully for a district council seat and then winning a seat in the 70-member legislature in early September.



She should have taken office last month following an oath-taking session on 12 October. But rather than read the formal oath, Yau and Leung sparked outrage in Beijing by holding up banners that read “Hong Kong is not China”. Yau went even further, declaring allegiance to a place she called the “People’s Refucking of Shina”.



The incident outraged pro-Chinese opponents in the legislature and officials in Beijing. “It’s a tradition for the lawmakers to do something in the oath-taking session, so we did something, but we didn’t expect this reaction,” Yau said.

Weeks of protests and vitriolic attacks from her critics have followed. One politician labelled Yau a “cancer cell” while a pro-China scholar referred to her as a “festering pustule”.



Even some pro-democracy activists and voters criticised her use of offensive language while still opposing China’s response to the incident.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yau poses at a mock up of the legislative chamber intended for visitors to take photos, she is barred from entering the real chamber. Photograph: Benjamin Haas/The Guardian

Eddie Chu, another newly elected politician who has promised to fight for greater autonomy from China, said the behaviour of Yau and Leung had “triggered a retaliation from Beijing”.

“But it would have come sooner or later … Beijing will try to create an atmosphere where a lot of pro-democracy legislators are in a firing range and they can pull the trigger whenever they want,” he said.



Chu, who shouted “Democracy and self-determination. Autocracy will die!” during the same swearing-in ceremony, is also in a vulnerable position in the current crisis. Pro-Beijing supporters are pushing for a review of whether he and seven other legislators should also be disqualified from office because of their protests at the oath-taking ceremony.



“I’m not worried at all,” Chu insisted of the potential case against him, which has yet to be accepted by the court. “I still have popular support.”

In a sign of Beijing’s concern over growing support for the idea of independence in Hong Kong, President Xi Jinping recently declared that separating the country would be a “tragedy”.

“We will never allow any person, any organisation, any political party, at any time, in any way, to split from any part of China’s territory,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sixtus ‘Baggio’ Leung and Yau Wai-ching with anti-China banners during their swearing-in ceremony. Photograph: Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty Images

Yau said she and her pro-independence supporters were a product of China’s hardline stance in dealing with issues it considers its “core interests”.

“There will be a trend for more Hongkongers to be localist,” she said, using a term associated with a younger generation that hopes to distance the city politically from China. “If the government will keep up their actions and attitudes towards the public, most Hongkongers will turn into localists in the next few years.

“If they don’t respect the values of Hongkongers, they can’t expect Hongkongers to fully obey.”

She claimed that moderate pro-democracy politicians and activists had achieved little by working within Hong Kong’s traditional political system. As a result she believed independence or “self-determination” were now the only ways to wrestle genuine democracy from Beijing. “We have to find another way to get what we want,” she said.

Political observers, however, fear the political climate in Hong Kong is likely to deteriorate as Beijing will not compromise with those daring to call for a split with China.



“This is going to put a constraint on freedom of speech in Hong Kong,” said Ma Ngok, a politics professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “Now political speech can get you disqualified from office … It shows that China doesn’t care about the reaction of the people in Hong Kong.”