HONG KONG, Dec 14 — Hong Kong’s last major opposition party holds a final vote on Sunday on whether to disband, as China ratchets up pressure on the city’s remaining liberal voices in a years-long national security crackdown.

The Democratic Party, founded three years before Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule from Britain in 1997, has been the city’s flagship opposition. It used to sweep city-wide legislative elections and push Beijing on democratic reforms and upholding freedoms.

The Special General Meeting at the party’s headquarters will confirm details of the party’s “dissolution and liquidation” arrangements, according to a party statement.

Senior party members say they had been approached by Chinese officials or middlemen and warned to disband or face severe consequences, including possible arrests.

A committee has already spent around half a year making arrangements for the disbandment, including resolving legal and accounting matters, and preparing the sale of a property in the Kowloon district that now serves as its headquarters.

Disbandment requires a vote of 75 per cent of members to pass.

The vote on ending three decades of opposition party politics in the China-run city comes a week after Hong Kong held a “patriots only” legislative council election and one day before media mogul and China critic Jimmy Lai receives a verdict in a landmark national security trial.

Under Hong Kong’s “One-Country, Two Systems” arrangement, the city is promised a high degree of autonomy and freedoms under Chinese rule. But in recent years, authorities have used the security laws to arrest scores of democrats and shutter civil society groups and liberal media outlets.

Beijing’s move in 2021 to overhaul the city’s electoral system – allowing only those vetted as “patriots” to run for public office – marginalised the party by removing it from mainstream politics.

In June, another pro-democracy group, the League of Social Democrats, said it would shut down amid “immense political pressure”.

Senior Democratic Party members Wu Chi-wai, Albert Ho, Helena Wong and Lam Cheuk-ting have been jailed or held in custody under a national security law that China imposed in 2020 in response to mass pro-democracy protests the year before.

Some governments, including the US and Britain, have criticised this security law, saying it has been used to stifle dissent and individual freedoms.

Beijing, however, says no freedoms are absolute and the national security law has restored stability to Hong Kong. — Reuters