After months of threats on the part of Secretary of Security Chris Tang Ping-keung (鄧炳強) to criminalize the vague concept of “soft resistance,” a.k.a. peaceful protest, art, activism and choosing what happens to one’s own internal organs, Hong Kong authorities have finally unveiled the public consultation document for Article 23 of the city’s Basic Law, the legislation that is intended to eliminate any remaining hiding place for effective pro-democracy expression.
The document presents Article 23 as a protective legal shield with global jurisdiction that will deliver the “national security and social stability” by which Beijing-appointed reforms and developments can “advance continuously” in a city viewed as a utopian appendage to mother China.
Neglecting to mention that such “reforms” are decided in an entirely top-down manner, devoid of meaningful input from the people who are supposed to live with them, the legal tools proposed in the document aim to frighten the public away from contact with foreigners and combat what the drafters term as the “barbaric and gross interference from foreign governments and politicians in Chinese affairs.” Unquestionably, the goal is to isolate Hong Kongers from any help that the international community could provide and ring-fence their government from any accountability or influence from outside the Chinese Communist Party.
As such, the proposed new legislation replaces the legal concept of an “enemy” in existing law with “external force,” an amendment that was explicitly undertaken because the former term is “too restrictive.” It then criminalizes the communication of “any information, document or other article” that could be useful to the purposes of such forces. While this criminalization is conditioned with intent to endanger national security, it is worth considering that wearing the wrong kind of T-shirt is interpreted as a threat to the state in the Hong Kong of 2024.
Tightening the vice, state secrets also face redefinition via Article 23 to harmonize with the mainland Chinese model, under the logic that “all types of state secrets should be protected in every place within one country.” Accordingly, in Hong Kong, supposedly a centerpiece of the global financial system, it will be considered a crime to impart “secrets concerning the economic and social development of our country [China] or the [Hong Kong Special Administrative Region].” Given the context of Xi Jinping-rule, this could well cover industry research, supply chain auditing or mundane economic data that shows China’s GDP figures before the statistical equivalent of Photoshop has been applied to them. Informing the public of incoming policy that might “induce the hatred” of Hong Kong people towards its government will also become a grave risk to any person brave enough to deliver such a message.
Undoubtedly, acts like passing details of institutional human rights abuses to an organization headquartered overseas like Amnesty International, which revealed evidence of torture by Hong Kong Police in 2019, could be prosecuted under the envisaged Article 23 additions. Providing information that inspired the likes of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Lichtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S. to criticize the treatment of Hong Kongers in front of the United Nations at a Universal Periodic Review of China’s human rights, as happened on Jan. 23, 2024, would certainly be interpreted as an offense, too.
Other provisions under Article 23 look to insulate decision-makers from the will of Hong Kong citizens to a greater degree than ever. Having already mischaracterized pro-democracy protest as rioting over the past four years, Hong Kong now wishes to pretend that expressions of public dissatisfaction are “insurrection” and increase the maximum jail terms in line with the exaggerated new description. Simultaneously, Article 23 drafters opine that even speech which does not encourage violence or disruption of public order should be considered as carrying seditious intent if it inspires enmity towards China’s rulers. Another recommendation suggests enhancing sedition punishments, while the secretary for security is set to receive sweeping powers to close any organization he or she chooses at the drop of a hat, too.
The new legislation also intends to punish anybody who incites public officers “to abandon the duties or allegiance to the People’s Republic of China.” Since the category of public officers includes lawmakers and other governance officials, a Hong Kong citizen could presumably be hauled off to jail merely for encouraging their representatives and public servants to support democratic processes. Simply writing an inciting letter but never sending it could also land somebody in prison.
Hong Kong authorities are justifying such legal excesses on the convoluted grounds that anti-China forces and foreign agents have hidden behind the guise of human rights “to launch various kinds of so-called resistance activities, offering support to the Hong Kong version of ‘color revolution’.” And the authorities have continued to use the ongoing trial of media magnate Jimmy Lai (黎智英) to manufacture evidence of such activities during the January of 2024.
In fact, far from plotting to overthrow the state on behalf of malign overseas actors, Lai, a self-made billionaire, was simply running a pro-democracy tabloid newspaper. Consequently, the material used to incriminate him in court is embarrassingly flimsy. Over the past couple of weeks, it has reportedly covered the people he followed on Twitter (now X), his failed invitation to U.S. government officials to subscribe to his content, his establishment of a WhatsApp group called English News that only contained negative views of Beijing and his general creation of an “anti-China” atmosphere.
Since the trial is an obvious charade, on January 22, 2024, United Nations human rights experts expressed their alarm at “the multiple and serious violations of Jimmy Lai’s freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association, and his right to a fair trial, including the denial of access to a lawyer of his own choosing and the handpicking of judges by the authorities.” They have further stated that the series of charges and convictions laid upon him to date “appear to be directly related to his criticism of the Chinese Government and his support for democracy in Hong Kong SAR.” Concurrently, the U.N. has been asked to investigate claims that one witness who will testify against Lai has been tortured.
Implicated alongside Lai is the U.K.-based human rights campaigner Luke de Pulford, who, as the founder and executive director of Britain’s Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, is precisely the kind of person that Hong Kong paints as an enemy of the state. This month, de Pulford revealed that he has become the victim of an impersonation campaign, whereby a provocateur seemingly acting on China’s behalf sent emails announcing his resignation from the U.K.’s Conservative Party and an organization called the Human Rights Commission.
Others who support democracy for Hong Kongers from overseas came under more severe pressure: On January 10, 2024, police detained the sisters and parents of Simon Cheng Man-kit (鄭文傑), an activist who was previously tortured by Chinese police and subsequently granted asylum in the U.K. The action against Cheng’s family follows last month’s announcement by Hong Kong authorities of bounties for his arrest along with four other like-minded individuals.
With such intimidations, the mainlandization of Hong Kong advances: A reciprocal agreement with China has come into force that will allow the jurisdiction of motherland court judgements for civil and commercial cases to apply in the city. Rocky Tuan Sung-chi (段崇智), the student-supporting vice chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, has resigned, which cements Beijing’s control over the institution. Mass installation of new surveillance tech, whose use of China’s notorious facial recognition tools has neither been confirmed or denied, is pending. A $40,000 tax bill has suddenly been levied against the Hong Kong Journalists Association, a known target for government ire. And “Expats,” an Amazon Prime series starring Nicole Kidman, for whose filming Hong Kong had allowed a spurious exemption to its COVID-19 rules, has been censored from the local internet.
Meanwhile, somewhere on the other side of a border to the mainland that symbolizes less and less by the day, the Hong Kong-Swedish bookseller Michael Gui Minhai (桂民海) completed his 3,000th day in prison on January 3. For many, his 2015 abduction in Thailand by people acting on China’s behalf marked the point of realization that something was terrifyingly wrong with Hong Kong.
As shown by the plans for Article 23, their worst fears have certainly been confirmed.
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