Beijing’s heavy-handed approach to Hong Kong could eventually remove pro-democracy figures from the city’s political arena, serving as a call for Hongkongers living overseas to continue to voice their compatriots’ plight, self-exiled activist Nathan Law said.

Law went into self-imposed exile to the United Kingdom last summer after pulling out of unofficial primary elections to select candidates for a legislative election. He now laments the mass prosecutions, for subversion, of the pro-democracy figures who organized the primaries.

Law said the repression has been heavier than he could have imagined, while the ordeal of the 55 democratic figures arrested in the case – many of them his friends – is a sharp reminder to him and other Hongkongers abroad about what they should do next, Law told Apple Daily.

“It is very depressing to see friends arrested and brought to trial,” the former lawmaker said. But instead of dwelling on their situations too much, Law said, he recognized that the freedom outside of Hong Kong allows him and others to play a bigger role in campaigning for his home city.

“I hope we can carry on together, and do some of their work for them,” he said. “The worse Hong Kong gets, the heavier the burden will be our shoulders. We have the resources and freedom … to do more for the common goals of Hongkongers,” he said.

Looking back on the primaries, Law said he had expected to be disqualified by the authorities from running in September’s official Legislative Council election, because of his campaigning abroad. The election was eventually postponed by one year.

The imposition of the national security law last June also led Law to rethink how he could continue to lobby governments around the world, he said.

Those who participated in the primaries found it hard to believe that they could be charged with subversion, because they had only sought to increase their influence in the established system by winning more seats in the legislature, possibly as many as 35, Law said.

Beijing is planning to adopt new rules that will in effect bar pro-democracy candidates from Hong Kong elections, Law noted. He said the overhaul will destroy the city’s political system entirely, concentrating power in the hands of Beijing loyalists.

Law believes Beijing might allow a small number of pro-democracy candidates to stand in elections after the overhaul, as a tactic to divide the camp. Hongkongers should not let this ploy drag them into infighting, he said.

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