Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions Votes to Disband: RTHK

(Bloomberg) -- The Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, the city’s largest pro-democracy labor organization, said its members have voted to disband the group due to political pressure, RTHK News reported.

“We all feel that it is politically uncertain to continue to run the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions,” RTHK cited CTU Vice Chairman Leo Tang as saying. 

The Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union, which represented nearly 100,000 educators, the Civil Human Rights Front, which organized pro-democracy marches that drew almost 2 million people in 2019, and the prisoners’ rights group Wall-Fare have all folded recently. The CTU had announced last month it would begin disbanding after pro-Beijing media outlets accused it of being an agent for foreign entities.

The CTU was founded in 1990 to represent more than 80 affiliates from various sectors in the city, according to RTHK.

Many pro-democracy groups have been shutting down after China imposed a national security law on Hong Kong last year that carries sentences as long as life in prison for activities deemed to be subversive.

The passage of a new national security law gives the government sweeping powers to prosecute.
 

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