By AFP and Focus | 2025-04-16

HONG KONG -- Under heavy skies, a minibus carrying Hong Kong politician Emily Lau rattles along a winding mountain road to Stanley Prison -- a visit she has grown all too familiar with.

Lau is the former chair of the Democratic Party, once the city's stalwart pro-democracy force. As she prepares to visit former party leader Albert Ho, jailed under national security charges that could see him imprisoned for life, her party is also preparing to fade into history.

On April 13, the Democratic Party voted overwhelmingly to move forward with plans to dissolve, after over three decades of political life. More than 90% of voting members supported a motion empowering the central committee to take steps toward disbandment. A final vote is expected in the coming months.

The decision, party chair Lo Kin-hei said, reflects the "overall political environment." Though he stopped short of naming Beijing, party veterans have alluded to pressure and implied consequences if the party did not shut down, according to the Associated Press.

Universal suffrage

Founded in 1994 during the twilight of British colonial rule, the Democratic Party emerged from a coalition of liberal groups committed to one core principle: achieving universal suffrage for Hong Kong under the framework of "One Country, Two Systems."

Its founding members believed Beijing's promise of "Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong." One of them, Lee Wing-tat, said that idealism eventually gave way to disillusionment.

"When I got older, I found out those slogans were fake," Lee, now living in the United Kingdom, said. "But it's hard to blame a young man in his twenties for being idealistic."

The party's early leaders, Szeto Wah and Martin Lee, embodied the moderate and patriotic image it projected.

Szeto, a strategist rooted in traditional values, and Lee, a prominent barrister dubbed the "Father of Democracy," helped establish the party's initial credibility and support among Hong Kong citizens.

That credibility once enabled the party to maintain a working relationship with Beijing. In 2010, the Democratic Party sent three representatives -- including Lau -- to meet with Beijing's liaison officers to discuss electoral reforms.

"That was the first time and the only time that Beijing decided to negotiate with us," Lau recalled. "We said to the liaison officers, 'Well, you must continue to talk to us.' They never did."

The meeting proved divisive. Critics accused the party of compromising, while younger members began pushing for more assertive tactics. Ted Hui, who won his first seat in 2011, represented a new generation of activists demanding bolder action.

"The party needed a more comprehensive transformation, so it can move in sync with society," Hui said. "We had to up our game."

In 2019, as pro-democracy protests rocked Hong Kong, the Democratic Party saw its message resonate again, more than doubling its seats in local councils.

But that momentum was short-lived.

A sweeping national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020 brought an abrupt end to the city's protest movement and to the Democratic Party's influence.

Authorities jailed four of its lawmakers, including Ho, on subversion charges related to an unofficial primary election. Hui himself fled to Australia and became the target of a police bounty.

Not forgotten

By 2020, the party held no seats in the legislature after its members resigned en masse in protest. The following year, they were wiped out from district councils.

Ramon Yuen, the party's former treasurer, recalled how even simple gatherings became impossible.

"Restaurants refused to host our banquets," he said. "Even normal social gatherings could not be held."

Yuen supported the vote to dissolve. "Hong Kong has discussed (universal suffrage) for so many years," he said, "but regrettably we don't know when we'll see it."

The Democratic Party had effectively become a pressure group without public office or political power, operating in a city where Beijing's grip has grown suffocating. Its disbandment follows the closure of the Civic Party in 2023, leaving no major opposition in formal politics.

For Lau, the dissolution of her party is not only a political defeat -- it is a signal of something larger lost.

Outside Stanley Prison, she said she continues to visit jailed Democrats to let them know "they have not been forgotten."

The party's closure, she said, should force the public to reflect.

"Why do we have to disband? What is going on?" she asked. "That's a question I want Hong Kong people to ask."

The answer may be found in the silence that now hangs over what was once one of Asia's most vibrant political scenes. What remains is a city transformed -- no longer the Hong Kong that its people, or the world, remember.