Explained: How democracy was dismantled in Hong Kong in 2021

As the days of 2021 dwindled, so did any remaining traces of democracy in Hong Kong.

On Wednesday, a vocal pro-democracy media outlet -- one of the last openly critical voices in the city -- closed after a police raid. Earlier in December, the opposition was shut out from elections under a new law that puts all candidates to a loyalty test. And monuments commemorating the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were taken down.

Again and again throughout the year, the city's authorities and the central government in Beijing stamped out nearly everything the pro-democracy movement had stood for. Activists fled abroad