Hong Kong protesters have always warned that China would take its tyranny global. As a worldwide bounty falls on the heads of several prominent Hong Kongers for the “crime” of seeking democracy, their words are no longer forewarnings: A fatwa with Chinese characteristics has commenced.
The ground ought to be shaking in Washington, in London, in Canberra and anywhere else that prizes freedom of expression and the right to vote. On Monday July 3rd, Hong Kong Police Force announced an arrest warrant for eight high-profile activists from the city who are living overseas: Nathan Law Kwun-chung (羅冠聰), Anna Kwok Fung-yee (郭鳳儀), Finn Lau Cho-dik (劉祖廸), Dennis Kwok Wing-hang (郭榮鏗), Ted Hui Chi-fung (許智峯), Kevin Yam Kin-fung (任建峰), Mung Siu-tat (蒙兆達) and Elmer Yuan Gong-yi (袁弓夷).
If ever caught, they could be sentenced for anything up to life imprisonment, and Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu (李家超) has vowed to pursue them “even if they run to the ends of the Earth.” He simultaneously encouraged their relatives and connections to betray them.
The warrants are not issued for offenses committed in Hong Kong, but, rather, for the work these former lawmakers, lawyers and civil society leaders have conducted to advocate for human rights from their countries of exile, where such activities are completely legal. They were accompanied by both rewards and threats: Anybody providing information that leads to arrest of the eight can receive up to HK$1 million (US$130,000), while the police attempted to menace their partners, friends and sponsors by suggesting that they were being tracked.
The move has many ramifications: While it is unlikely that any of the figures targeted will be captured in Australia, the U.K. or the U.S., where they currently reside, their international lobbying efforts will become more complex due to the risk of arrest during airport transfer or in countries that still operate extradition treaties with Hong Kong. More sinisterly, anybody in contact with the eight is also vulnerable to being labelled as a criminal, and, via its Hong Kong proxies, China has very publicly signaled its intention to transform the entire world into a police state for people that challenge the Communist Party’s legitimacy to rule, many of whom are not so well-protected as those named in the warrants.
Indeed, this is a watershed moment: For a long time, Beijing has been surreptitiously advancing extraterritorial repression in diverse ways: abusing Interpol’s Red Notice system, operating clandestine police stations and black sites across the globe, disappearing people in Southeast Asia and further afield, making secret deals with Switzerland to flood Schengen countries with security agents, engineering the arrest of activists under third party terrorism laws and intimidating the relatives of Uyghurs detained in camps, among others. All of these nefarious tactics to silence critics and whistleblowers, however, were conducted with either the veneer of legality or in a hush-hush manner that looked to avoid scrutiny.
Now China is screaming its intention to destroy supporters of democracy and human rights from the tree tops, beginning with the circumglobal jurisdiction of Hong Kong’s 2020 National Security Law, continuing with attempts to ban the song “Glory to Hong Kong” everywhere on the planet and now echoing through its latest arrest warrants. It also seems to be debuting “one country, two systems” 2.0, i.e. the deployment of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region not as a location where more latitude is afforded to citizens, but as a domain from which experimental freedom-cutting laws can be launched and reactions tested.
In some ways, this marks another failure for Beijing. It is not pretending or hiding its attacks on basic rights, perhaps because the game is up. People know what the regime is and what it does. The suffocation of Hong Kong has been played out to the world, and the argument that China is a benign, nonimperial power supporting a multipolar international order is no longer plausible. Thus, it may as well push its cruel, misapplied laws as far as they will go and seek support from other repressive countries, who will no doubt delight in launching similar warrants of their own.
On the other hand, Hong Kong feels emboldened to take such a step because the international community has been half-hearted and powerless to stop the city’s authorities from throwing innocent people in jail, transforming elections into effigies of themselves and inventing thought crimes. After a few angry statements, representatives of major democracies are elbowing one another aside to kicksart trade with both China and Hong Kong. Corporate giants are carrying out policies to disempower Hong Kongers. The United Nations remains weak and conflicted. And the support for people fleeing to other countries is not always as comprehensive as it could be.
Flat-footedness is puzzling, because, even in its announcement of the eight arrest warrants, China is transparently demonstrating its weaknesses for all to see. The particular crimes that have been alleged by police against the pro-democracy figures include calling for sanctions against Hong Kong officials and scheming to undermine Hong Kong’s financial status. In other words, investor pullouts and Magnitsky-style travel bans and asset freezes genuinely do hit right to the top of the power pyramid, if upheld.
The reward for those who realize this sooner, not later, will be far greater than anything HK$1 million can buy. As evidenced by Beijing’s increasingly all-encompassing laws, the dangers of foregoing weapons to bring its assertiveness to heel are meanwhile unthinkable.
Image: Photo by Steven Wei on Unsplash
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