Pro-democracy lawmakers begin resigning in Hong Kong

More than a dozen pro-democracy legislators in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council resigned on Thursday after several of their colleagues were expelled from the lawmaking body in the wake of new rules imposed by China.

The Associated Press and Reuters reported that the 15 members of Hong Kong’s opposition party remaining on the council resigned following Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s defense of the expulsions a day earlier.

“We lost our check-and-balance power, and all the constitutional power in Hong Kong rests in the chief executive’s hands,” said Wu Chi-wai, leader of the group of lawmakers, according to the AP.

“Carrie Lam is corrupting Hong Kong and hurting its people; She will stink for 10,000 years,” the group added in a banner displayed at the Legislative Council building, Reuters reported.

Chinese authorities fired back in a statement from the country’s Foreign Ministry, accusing the lawmakers of seeking to drive Hong Kong back toward months of protests and “chaos.”

“We would like to warn these opposition members that if they want to use this to encourage radical resistance and beg for intervention from outside forces to drag Hong Kong into chaos again, that is a wrong calculation,” the country’s Hong Kong and Macau Office said, according to Reuters.

“No country will turn a blind eye to acts of betrayal of the country by public officials, including members of the Legislative Council, who break their oaths of office,” added Wang Wenbin, spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, in a statement Thursday.

The resignations follow months of protests over changes to Hong Kong law pushed by mainland Chinese authorities that many on the island say are designed to bring it closer to Beijing. Chinese officials and their supporters in Hong Kong’s legislature have backed moves cracking down on dissent and expanding power for authorities, which culminated this week in a resolution that called for the expulsion of any pro-independence lawmakers from the council.

Officials in the U.S., U.K. and other nations condemned the expulsions, with China’s ambassador to the U.K. reportedly summoned by that country’s Foreign Office over the issue.

″‘One country, two systems’ is now merely a fig leaf covering for the CCP’s expanding one-party dictatorship in Hong Kong,” added Robert O’Brien, President Trump’s national security adviser, referring to the Chinese Communist Party, according to the AP.