(Lee Cheuk-yan in his Hong Kong office in 2013. Photo by Joseph B. Atkins)
The London-based international labor organization LabourStart has launched a campaign to free Hong Kong activist and labor leader Lee Cheuk-yan and fellow activist Chow Hang-tung from prison.
Lee, founder and former leader of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) and an organizer of the previous annual commemoration of the victims of the 1989 crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, was sentenced to seven years in prison on September 11, while Chow received a sentence of seven years and three months. On August 21, the High Court of Hong Kong convicted Lee and Chow of incitement to subversion under the National Security Law.
These most recent convictions come several years after Lee’s earlier sentencing for his role in pro-democracy rallies in 2019.
“Lee has stood up fearlessly for the rights of working people and for democracy,” LabourStart said in a September 11 statement. “Our message—the message of millions of trade unionists from around the world—could not be clearer: Free Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung—now.”
I interviewed Lee in Hong Kong back in June 2013 and also joined in the pro-democracy vigil at Victoria Park. Pressure from Beijing at the time seemed to me comparatively muted—dock workers had just won a 40-day strike in a city without collective bargaining rights--but Lee knew Beijing lurked in the shadows and posed an ever-present threat.
“We have to support independent unions, and at the same time, democratic rights,” Lee told me. “Unless there is democracy in China, it will be far more difficult for Hong Kong to have a real democracy. … We have to support independent unions, and at the same time, democratic rights.”
For the past 28 years, LabourStart has sponsored campaigns, podcasts, conferences, and books in support of working people and union members around the world.
“LabourStart stands among the world’s foremost organizations for campaigning and information advocacy on labor issues,” the 450,000-member National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) in Canada said in a recent statement announcing a major contribution to the organization. “We deeply appreciate your ongoing efforts to build solidarity, rally support, and amplify voices from workers’ struggles both at home and abroad. Through your grassroots actions and campaigns, LabourStart empowers everyday people to take meaningful action in the pursuit of social and economic justice.”
In 2016, LabourStart published this writer’s collection of different activists and writers’ essays The Strangers Among Us: Tales from a Global Migrant Worker Movement.
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