Hong Kong – request for urgent intervention

TUC General Secretary Frances O'Grady has written to the Foreign Secretary urging him to intervene to stop arrests of trade union and other leaders of the Umbrealla Movement. Here is the text of her letter.

As the UK government was a co-signatory to the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong, I urge you to intervene with the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to urge them to refrain from any arrests of the leaders of the Umbrella Movement, including two leaders of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) listed below, and to release those currently imprisoned for having participated in the peaceful protest organised by or associated with the Umbrella Movement or pro-democracy rallies generally.

Following the mass-mobilisation of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong which began on 28 September 2014, the government, directly or through coordination with known criminal gangs, retaliated against the protestors in violation of the right to assemble and to associate. Nearly a thousand people have been arrested during the three-month long protest and others suffered physical harm from tear gas or beatings by police batons.

Now the government has announced a plan to arrest and detain the top leaders of the Umbrella Movement for inciting ‘an illegal assembly’ . This is despite the fact that those leaders and their many thousands of followers engaged in an extraordinarily peaceful protest to advocate for the legitimate aim of greater democratic governance in Hong Kong.

The protesters included many from the HKCTU, which, like the TUC, is an affiliate of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). Two of its leaders – Lee Cheuk-yan, General Secretary, and Mung Siu-tat, Executive Director - are among those listed for arrest.

The protests carried out by the HKCTU and the rest of the Umbrella Movement constitute the legitimate exercise of their freedom of association, as provided for by the core conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).