Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
O
n a gloriously sunny afternoon in early May in South West London, hundreds of Hongkongers queued up patiently outside a Victorian music hall to watch a concert of Hong Kong veteran singer and activist Anthony Wong Yiu-ming. Wong has been a staunch supporter of the Asian city’s democracy movement for decades. The concert was part of his first world tour since the 2020 implementation of the sweeping National Security Law in Hong Kong that had prompted an emigration wave from the city.
Homesick Hongkongers were eager to hear him live again, and he did not disappoint. Wong’s captivating voice soon had most members of the audience recalling their lives back in their home city, leaving them with a myriad of emotions. Wong later announced that he had received a venue permission from the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) to stage a concert there in August.

But just weeks later, on 27 May, the singer posted a letter from the HKCEC on his social-media accounts that said the venue permission had been withdrawn. In the letter, HKCEC said that it was “not in a position to proceed with the execution of the license agreement and the provision of venue” for the concert.
“They (HKCEC) did not say why,” Wong wrote in his social-media posts, “but actually we all know what the reason is.”
In fact, the real surprise was that HKCEC had issued a venue permission at all. In the last few years, freedom of expression has been shrinking fast in Hong Kong, with the national security and sedition laws putting artists of all stripes under constant enormous pressure to be careful with what they produce — or support. This has forced an environment of self-censorship, yet many artists still come under criticism from state media or the government itself, with their works deemed as containing “dissident” messages even being pulled out of public view.
Indeed, by the time Wong received the letter from HKCEC, Ming Pao, one of Hong Kong’s most famous newspapers, had already ceased publishing the popular cartoon columns created by political cartoonist Wong Kei-kwan, better known as ‘Zunzi.’ The move had come after Hong Kong government top officials in the course of six months kept attacking Zunzi’s cartoons as containing “misleading and false accusations.”
Zunzi is Hong Kong’s most prominent political cartoonist. The abrupt termination of his columns had Hong Kong buzzing, with many of the city’s residents seeing it as yet another sign of the deterioration of freedom of expression in the Chinese Special Administrative Region.
A career spanning decades
Now in his late 60s, Zunzi started a cartoon column in Ming Pao in 1981 and came up with the popular character Councilor Mr. What in 1983. A year later, the Sino-British Joint Declaration — the treaty confirming that Hong Kong would be handed back to Beijing in 1997 — was signed.

In the four decades that followed, Zunzi published a lot of cartoons in response to political issues that swirled through a city supposedly operating under Beijing’s so-called ‘one country, two systems’ principle. Wickedly humorous, Zunzi’s works always struck a chord with a broad range of Hong Kong residents, particularly during times of government dissatisfaction, and skillfully employed satire to question authorities. Zunzi’s distinct style made his works a cultural reference point in discussions about Hong Kong’s political landscape. Even when the draconian National Security Law had already deterred most people from expressing their political views, Zunzi persisted in doing so through his art.
After all, why wouldn’t he? Satire is a common form of artistic expression that is protected under international human-rights instruments, including Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In its General Comment No. 34, the U.N. Human Rights Committee explicitly explained that State parties are obliged to guarantee the right to freedom of expression and “the expression and receipt of communications of every form of idea and opinion capable of transmission to others,” including cultural and artistic expression.
In a December 2020 statement calling for the release of Bangladesh cartoonist Ahmed Kabir Kishore, a group of U.N. human-rights experts, including the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, insisted that “criticism of government policy, including through political satire and cartoons, is permitted under the rights to freedom of expression and cultural rights, and should not be criminalized.” In Europe, the European Court of Human Rights reaffirmed in Vereinigung Bildender Künstler v. Austria that any interference with artist’s right to satire, which aims to provoke and agitate by its inherent features of exaggeration and distortion of reality, must be examined with particular care.
Then again, Zunzi lives and works in Hong Kong, where the government seems to be unable to understand and appreciate satire. More importantly, it has all but neglected its duty to respect the right to freedom of expression.
Over the past six months, Hong Kong’s top officials had been loudly criticizing Zunzi’s works as “absurd and a serious deviation from the truth,” disregarding the fact that satirical cartoons serve as a humorous means of responding to current affairs and should be respected.
Under such constant barrage of criticism from officials, Ming Pao finally gave in and announced that Zunzi’s cartoon column would no longer appear beginning 14 May. Zunzi’s books have also disappeared from public library shelves.
Complaints over cartoons
Yet Zunzi probably saw it all coming. In 2020, another political cartoonist had been subjected to constant complaints about his works that appeared primarily on social media. ‘Vawongsir,’ whose day job was as a teacher in secondary school, received letters from the Education Bureau that accused him of making “groundless allegations toward police and the government” that could be regarded as “misconduct behavior (sic).” He was denied contract renewal by his school following the complaints, but found employment in another school. In May last year, Vawongsir decided to resign and subsequently left Hong Kong due to political pressure and safety concerns.
Justin Wong Chiu-tat is another cartoonist who has left Hong Kong. Also a visual arts professor, Wong has disclosed that he decided to pack his bags in December 2021 after learning that his university had contacted the police about an article he had written regarding the 2019 pro-democracy protests in the city. He has relocated to the United Kingdom, where he has continued to draw comics; he has a column in Ming Pao.
Speaking to Asia Democracy Chronicles recently, Justin Wong said that where many pro-democracy politicians, activists, civil-society groups, and political commentators face arrests or the stifling of their voices, Zunzi’s works had stood as the last vestige of the critical voices in Hong Kong’s mainstream media. The forced shutdown of his cartoon columns thus has an immense significance to Hong Kong’s freedom of expression.
As an experienced visual artist and a columnist, Wong is acutely aware of the self-censorship and intense political pressure prevalent in Hong Kong’s art and publishing sectors. He said that artworks publicly presented in what used to be a liberal, cosmopolitan city are now subjected to close scrutiny. That partly explains why it is difficult to see any artwork with critical messages on public display in Hong Kong. Many local artists also have to rely on government-funded venues, even as they are acutely aware that the government maintains a blacklist of artists who do not toe the line.
It’s no wonder then that a significant number of artists have chosen to continue their creative pursuits elsewhere. Apart from Justin Wong and Vawongsir, comic artists Ah To, Tony Lau, visual artist Kacey Wong, and painter duo Lumli Lumlong – all well-known and pro-democracy supporters — have already left Hong Kong. It may not even be farfetched to say that among the audience at Anthony Wong’s recent London concert were artist émigrés from his home city.

For sure, however, there are still artists who are determined to stay as long as they can in Hong Kong, despite the shrinking civil space. Zunzi himself has said he is staying put. Yet whether they are based in Hong Kong or overseas, artists like Zunzi and Justin Wong are equally resolute in exercising their freedom of expression through their work. They know that in these challenging times, art – in cartoon and other forms — can serve as a source of resilience, empowering people and helping them regain strength and to persevere.
It may even end up helping people now in political pain eventually having the last laugh.◉