01-08-2025
Pro-democracy politician who lit candles for Tiananmen Square victims arrested under China's ‘chilling' new law
Macau's best-known democracy advocate has become the first person detained under China's newly expanded national security laws.
68-year-old Au Kam San, who has spent the past two decades as a lone dissenting voice in Macau's tightly managed legislature, now finds himself behind bars for allegedly 'colluding with foreign forces'.
According to a statement from Macau's Public Prosecutions Office, 'compulsory detention' was imposed on Au following a 'preliminary investigation' after police arrested him at his home on Wednesday.
Authorities claim Au maintained contact with an unnamed 'anti-China organisation' abroad since 2022, and accuse him of spreading 'false and seditious information' to incite hatred against the Chinese government.
The charges also allege Au attempted to disrupt Macau's 2024 leadership election and provoke 'hostile actions by foreign countries against Macau.'
'The Public Prosecutions Office will fully hold accountable those who attempt to disrupt national security,' the statement reads, promising to 'confront hostile forces to the end.'
Au Kam San, a former school teacher and founding member of several moderate pro-democracy groups, became a quiet but consistent critic of the opaque governance and social inequality in the ritzy gambling enclave.
On the 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown in June 2025, Au said he lit candles in remembrance and posted on Facebook it was 'the best way I can honour the memory of the event'.
'My stance is very clear, and I am not someone who changes easily. I won't alter my approach simply because someone shows a bit more 'concern',' he wrote.
In mainland China, it is effectively illegal to speak about the Tiananmen Square massacre in any public or commemorative context. Since the 1990s, authorities have banned all public mourning, detained individuals who attempted memorials, and suppressed the memory of the event through pervasive censorship.
Even the words 'June 4' and 'Tank Man' are barred on Chinese social media.
Unlike the more combative pro-democracy figures in neighbouring Hong Kong — where mass protests in 2014 and 2019 brought international attention and brutal crackdowns — Macau's opposition has long existed on the margins.
Through the 2000s and 2010s, Au stood largely alone in Macau's Legislative Assembly, pushing back against authoritarian drift and warning of rising inequality in a city flush with casino money.
He openly criticised the handling of corruption cases involving senior officials like Ao Man Long and Ho Chio Meng, who were both jailed in high-profile graft trials.
'Chilling effect on Macau'
Jason Chao, a Macau-born activist now based in the UK, said the arrest was disproportionate.
'Au had occasionally made mildly critical online posts against the Chinese and Macau governments but nothing to warrant his arrest,' Chao said via Reuters.
'There will be a profound chilling effect on the people of Macau.'
Au's detention marks the latest episode in Beijing's relentless campaign to crush dissent under the banner of national security.
In Hong Kong, sweeping national security laws imposed in 2020 have led to the closure of newspapers like Apple Daily, the arrest of virtually all opposition lawmakers, and the effective end of its once-thriving civil society.
When local authorities still found pockets of resistance, a second, even tougher, security law was rammed through in 2024.
In 2023, Macau's security laws were expanded again to include vaguely defined threats like 'external interference' and 'provoking hatred against the government.'
Civil rights groups warned at the time that it would become a tool to stifle legitimate political expression.
Au is one of many prominent dissidents to be detained in China in recent years.
Among the most high-profile cases is that of Ilham Tohti, a respected Uyghur economist who was sentenced to life in prison for 'separatism' after promoting peaceful dialogue between Uyghurs and Han Chinese. His jailing sent a warning that even moderate calls for understanding would be treated as existential threats.
A similar message was delivered in 2023 with the 14-year sentence handed to Xu Zhiyong, a former legal scholar who led the New Citizens' Movement, a grassroots push for transparency and rule of law.
In the same year, media mogul Jimmy Lai, founder of the now-shuttered Apple Daily, was put on trial under the national security law, accused of collusion with foreign forces in a case widely condemned by press freedom advocates.
Joshua Wong, the student activist who became the face of Hong Kong's 2014 Umbrella Movement, has also faced repeated arrests under similar charges.
