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What a Stray Dog's Murder Tells Us About Chinese Civil Society
Commentary

What a Stray Dog's Murder Tells Us About Chinese Civil Society

Published in The Diplomat, 25 July 2026. The killing of a stray dog in Jieyang produced China's largest spontaneous mobilization in years — and crowdfunded memorial advertisements on more than 240 screens worldwide. This commentary reads the takedown response, from a leaked Shenyang cyberspace-office risk memo to this week's banner and tram-ad removals in Hong Kong, as evidence of where Chinese civil society now survives: in decentralized, apolitical networks the state itself classifies as the operative threat.

The Taichung Attack on Akio Yaita and the Ethnic Unity Promotion Law
Policy Brief

The Taichung Attack on Akio Yaita and the Ethnic Unity Promotion Law

The 6 July 2026 attack on journalist Akio Yaita in Taichung fits a 'hit-and-run' pattern of transnational repression. This brief reads it through the new Ethnic Unity Promotion Law's mobilization function — and maps the institutional void that would leave Japan unable to classify the same attack on its own soil.

Beyond Extraterritorial Repression
Policy Brief

Beyond Extraterritorial Repression

China's new Ethnic Unity Promotion Law is widely read as another tool for prosecuting dissidents abroad. That reading misses its design: the law treats the diaspora not as foreigners reached across a border but as unfinished interior — and the deeper target is the sovereignty of the states that host them.

Refuse to Forget, Refuse to Fall Silent
Speech

Refuse to Forget, Refuse to Fall Silent

At the 37th-anniversary Tiananmen memorial in Tokyo, LLHK Executive Director Alric Lee insists the evening is no exercise in nostalgia — invoking Chow Hang-tung's hunger strike and the candles of Victoria Park to argue that memory lives in the daily refusal to forget or fall silent.

Chow Hang-tung's Closing Submissions (Oral) — HCCC 155/2022
Memo

Chow Hang-tung's Closing Submissions (Oral) — HCCC 155/2022

Speaking in her own defence, barrister Chow Hang-tung argues that 'ending one-party dictatorship' is not a crime but a call for the rule of law — and that what is truly on trial is not the defendant, but the law itself. Her closing submissions in the Hong Kong Alliance case, reproduced in full.

Statement on the Detention of Zhang Xinyan in Thailand
Statement

Statement on the Detention of Zhang Xinyan in Thailand

What is at stake is not politics, but the integrity of refugee protection itself. A UNHCR-recognised refugee facing a credible risk of persecution must not be returned under the guise of immigration enforcement.

Statement on the Sentencing of Jimmy Lai and Co-Defendants
Statement

Statement on the Sentencing of Jimmy Lai and Co-Defendants

The 20-year sentence imposed on Jimmy Lai — effectively a life sentence — exposes a fundamental failure in how democratic governments confront political repression in China. The West frames the case as human rights; Beijing treats it as regime survival.

On the Hong Kong Government's Hostility Towards Japan
Statement

On the Hong Kong Government's Hostility Towards Japan

The Hong Kong government's hostile measures toward Japan are mere deference to Beijing, and the opposite of the will of Hong Kong's people. As neighbours who share the values of freedom and democracy, we fully support Japan's security policy and its right to self-defence.

The Consul's Provocation Is a Performance for Beijing
Commentary

The Consul's Provocation Is a Performance for Beijing

Reported by The Sankei Shimbun, 17 November 2025. Analyzing Chinese Osaka Consul-General Xue Jian's provocative posts against Prime Minister Takaichi, LLHK's Alric Lee argues the outburst is a 'carefully calculated performance' aimed not at Japanese readers but at the Chinese Communist Party leadership. He traces the pattern to Beijing's post-2014 turn in Hong Kong, and urges Japan to respond firmly, on international standards, without being drawn into the 'angry Japan' framing Chinese nationalism seeks.

A Hundred-Year Struggle for Freedom — and Hong Kong's Lessons
Speech

A Hundred-Year Struggle for Freedom — and Hong Kong's Lessons

At the centenary of the Inner Mongolian People's Party, LLHK Executive Director Alric Lee links Southern Mongolia's struggle to Hong Kong, Tibet, and East Turkistan — arguing that the renewal of democracy begins with a renewal of our shared humanity.

Selling Nostalgia, Hong Kong Hides Inconvenient Truth
Commentary

Selling Nostalgia, Hong Kong Hides Inconvenient Truth

Published in Nikkei Asia, 31 August 2025. The Japanese box-office success of 'Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In' and a surge in Japanese tourism to Hong Kong have been folded into a state-managed nostalgia campaign. This commentary argues that Hong Kong Tourism Board promotions — fronted by Japanese celebrities — sell a sanitized city of heritage without memory, obscuring the courtrooms, prisons and silenced newsrooms behind the postcard, and calls on Japanese artists and audiences to refuse complicity.

Statement on the Forced Disbandment of the League of Social Democrats
Statement

Statement on the Forced Disbandment of the League of Social Democrats

Lady Liberty Hong Kong mourns the forced disbandment of the League of Social Democrats — one of the last remaining pro-democracy political forces in Hong Kong — and calls on the diaspora and the international community to inherit and defend its spirit of defiance.

Beyond Borders, Beyond Hatred: Common Action for Freedom
Speech

Beyond Borders, Beyond Hatred: Common Action for Freedom

On the 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, LLHK Executive Director Alric Lee addressed the 9th World Parliamentarians' Convention on Tibet in Tokyo — on memory, nonviolence, and building common ground across movements.

Beyond the National-Security Veil: Transnational Repression, Legal Entrenchment, and Strategies for Hong Kong's Democratic Movement
Commentary

Beyond the National-Security Veil: Transnational Repression, Legal Entrenchment, and Strategies for Hong Kong's Democratic Movement

Published as an ADRN Issue Briefing, 21 May 2025. Five years after the National Security Law, two 2025 developments — the punitive targeting of exiled activists' families and new subsidiary legislation embedding mainland jurisdiction inside Hong Kong's legal order — complete the city's shift from a constrained hybrid regime to openly authoritarian rule. This commentary traces that entrenchment through the Kwok case and Article 55, and sets out the domestic and diaspora strategies still open to the democracy movement.

The 2023 Hong Kong Liberty Art Prize: Art and Human Rights Advocacy across Borders
Commentary

The 2023 Hong Kong Liberty Art Prize: Art and Human Rights Advocacy across Borders

Published in the eighth issue of FIHRM-AP — the Federation of International Human Rights Museums, Asia-Pacific — on 26 August 2024. In this essay, LLHK co-founder Alric Lee recounts how the Hong Kong Liberty Art Prize built cross-border partnerships across Japan and Taiwan to sustain censored Hong Kong artists, from the 2023 Taipei exhibition to the 2024 Sapporo show, and reflects on the political and financial obstacles — and the future — of art as human-rights advocacy.

On the Passage of Article 23: A Call for Japan to Act
Statement

On the Passage of Article 23: A Call for Japan to Act

Lady Liberty Hong Kong condemns the rapid passage of the Article 23 national security legislation, which goes beyond the 2020 National Security Law in undermining Hong Kong's freedoms — and urges the Japanese government to stand up and act.

Hong Kong: International Community Must Come Together in Opposition to Article 23
Statement

Hong Kong: International Community Must Come Together in Opposition to Article 23

Joint press release: Advocates came together to voice their concerns regarding Hong Kong's new Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (SNSO), also known as 'Article 23,' urging the international community to consolidate efforts to publicly voice opposition and convey concerns to both the Chinese and Hong Kong governments.