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With the rest of the world paralyzed and preoccupied with the coronavirus pandemic that broke out in the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan last December, Beijing has set in motion a series of arbitrary and rapid-fire manoeuvres in Hong Kong that has thrown the leadership of the democratic movement in the semi-autonomous city into disarray and despair.

“It is feeling very, very much like a lost cause now,” Catrina Ko, a prominent activist in the youthful pro-democracy uprising that erupted last summer, told me today. “The enemy is advancing. We are losing. We are losing at a rate that the international community is not keeping up with as a counterforce. It’s like we have nothing to fight back with. And it’s going to keep getting worse.”

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Over the weekend, the Hong Kong police rounded up some of the most senior figures among Hong Kong’s democrats. Among the 15 leaders arrested was Martin Lee, the 81-year-old founder of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party and co-author of Hong Kong’s “Basic Law” mini-constitution, which sets out the “one country, two systems” arrangement that was put in place after Britain handed Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997.