A woman takes photos of the China's national flags and the flags of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, on June 29. Photo: Pengpai

 

Another anti-China group in Hong Kong, Civic Passion, disbanded on Friday, after its chairman was removed from the Legislative Council (LegCo) more than a week ago, following the disbandment of HK's largest opposition alliance Civil Human Rights Front and Hong Kong teachers' union last month. 

Civic Passion said on its Facebook page on Friday that it decided to disband, effective immediately, since the road in politics has come to an end. The group's two members, Wong Wing-sze and Wong Siu-kin, resigned from their posts as district councilors on Friday.

The announcement came after its chairman Cheng Chung-tai was disqualified from being a LegCo member on August 26, after the Candidate Eligibility Review Committee of Hong Kong examined his qualifications and decided that he did not fit the role which required candidates to pledge allegiance and be loyal to Hong Kong, making him the first person to fail in the vetting process after the committee was established. 

Cheng attracted public attention in 2016 after he damaged China's national flag and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region's flag at the LegCo, saying he did not regret these actions. In 2017, he was convicted and fined for flag desecration.

Prior to this, the Executive Committee of the Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union, a group that has long engaged in anti-China and trouble-making activities, disbanded on August 10, and Hong Kong's Civil Human Rights Front, the biggest opposition alliance in the city, disbanded on August 15. 

Lawrence Tang Fei, a member of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies, told the Global Times on Friday that radical groups tried to use disbandment to evade legal responsibility, but police would continue probing such anti-China groups. 

He predicts that more radical opposition groups including the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (known as Hong Kong Alliance) and Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions may follow suit, and noted that the majority opposition groups left were immature compared with the Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union. 

Several local media outlets had reported that the Hong Kong Alliance is on the verge of disbandment, and said the Hong Kong police's National Security Department was investigating several groups like the Alliance.