As I write this, I am looking at my small model of the Goddess of Democracy (民主女神像) on the shelf. It takes me back to my student activist years in Hong Kong, when democracy was something my generation argued about, organised around and fought for.

The original Goddess stood in Tiananmen Square for only a few days before it was destroyed in June 1989. Its image survived. In Hong Kong, one organisation kept that memory alive for more than three decades: the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (支聯會).

On 21 August 2026, the Hong Kong Alliance and its former leaders Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung were convicted of inciting subversion under the National Security Law. Albert Ho, another former leader, had previously pleaded guilty. Central to the case was the Alliance’s longstanding call to “end one-party dictatorship”. The court held that this sought to undermine the constitutional leadership of the Communist Party of China.

The Alliance organised the annual candlelight vigils in Victoria Park commemorating the victims of 4 June 1989. Its politics were always contested. The pro-Beijing camp opposed its objectives. As a member of the pan-democratic camp, I defended the tradition of June Fourth remembrance. Some right-wing localists opposed the vigil for very different reasons, questioning its focus on democratisation in China and arguing for a future centred more exclusively on Hong Kong.

Those arguments could be fierce. Looking back, what stays with me is that we were able to have them.

That was part of the Hong Kong I grew up in. Pro-Beijing politicians, pan-democrats and localists had radically different ideas about democracy, identity, China and Hong Kong’s future. Even the meaning of June Fourth was openly contested.

Much of that political space has disappeared. Political participation now operates under the principle of “patriots administering Hong Kong”, with national-security requirements shaping who can stand for public office. Pan-democrats and localists no longer participate in formal politics in anything resembling their previous form.

The Alliance case captures this change. Hong Kong once argued openly over competing political futures. Today, advocacy directly challenging the Communist Party’s monopoly on political power can fall within national-security law. It raises a basic liberal question: how much room remains for peaceful political disagreement?

Pluralism requires space for people with fundamentally different ideas to argue, organise and persuade. We can profoundly disagree with a political movement while defending its right to take part peacefully in public life. That freedom once allowed pro-Beijing politicians, pan-democrats and localists to argue over Hong Kong’s future. Its loss should concern liberals everywhere.

The Alliance also carried something beyond politics. For decades, candles in Victoria Park allowed Hongkongers to remember publicly what could not be openly commemorated in mainland China. A replica of the Goddess of Democracy stood at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) from 2010 until it was removed in December 2021. As political space narrowed, so did the space for public remembrance.

I thought about this recently in Taiwan. At the National Human Rights Museum, I met Mr Chin, a survivor of Taiwan’s White Terror. He told me how he had been falsely accused, tortured and imprisoned for twelve years. Hearing him speak made the human cost of political repression immediate. Court judgments and laws can sound remote. Their consequences are measured in lives and years that cannot be returned.

What stayed with me was where he could now tell that story. We were standing in a National Human Rights Museum in democratic Taiwan. A political system that once imprisoned people for dissent eventually gave way to one where former political prisoners can speak openly, citizens can challenge their government, competing parties can seek power and the authoritarian past can be publicly examined.

In Taiwan, a former political prisoner can tell his story in a museum preserving the history of repression. In Hong Kong, the organisation that spent decades keeping the memory of another political crackdown alive has itself been prosecuted.

Taiwan gives me hope. Its history is no blueprint for Hong Kong, and the circumstances are very different. It does show that political systems which appear deeply entrenched can change. Political prisoners can become witnesses. Suppressed histories can return to public life. The present does not have to be permanent.

For Liberal Democrats, that hope also carries responsibility. Our policy already reflects it: protecting the five-year BNO pathway, supporting activists facing transnational repression and calling for targeted sanctions against officials responsible for overseas intimidation.

Britain cannot decide Hong Kong’s political future. We can decide whether to defend the freedoms and international commitments at stake.

We stand with Hong Kong because we are liberals. The freedom to disagree with government, organise peacefully, remember history and argue for a different political future should belong to everyone. That should matter to Liberal Democrats, our sister parties and democrats everywhere.

I look again at the Goddess of Democracy on my shelf. The original was destroyed in 1989. The one at CUHK was removed in 2021. Mine is still here. It is only a small model, but it brings back a whole part of the Hong Kong I grew up in.

Governments can remove statues and close organisations. They have much less control over what people remember.

The Hong Kong Alliance case gives us every reason for concern. Mr Chin gives me reason for hope. And Hong Kong gives liberals every reason to remember why we began.

* Arthur Wu is a member of the Liberal Democrats and currently serves as Honorary Vice President of the Young Liberals. He is also the Membership Secretary of Liberal Democrat Friends of Hong Kong and has represented the Young Liberals and the Liberal Democrats at international conferences.