Beijing renews Hong Kong clampdown

Submitted by AWL on 11 January, 2022 - 3:21 Author: Ralph Peters
Hong Kong arrest

Workers' Liberty will be discussing the political crackdown in Hong Kong at our online meeting on Sunday 16 January at 6.30pm. More details here.

Hong Kong authorities renewed their legal attacks on dissent at the end of December 2021. That followed a couple of months when the authorities had refrained from arrests in the hope of getting credible votes for their candidates for the part-elected Legislative Council (LegCo).

The office of the recently-established bilingual Stand News, which had extensively covered the democracy revolt, was raided on 29 December. Senior staff and board members were arrested and publication ceased. Another media outfit, Citizen News, announced four days later that it was closing.

Some 64 civil society organisations have now been forced to disband or close: 12 trade unions, 8 media organisations, 8 grassroots neighbourhood groups, 7 professional groups, 5 student organisations, 6 political groups or parties, 7 Chinese solidarity groups or human rights organisations and 4 religious groups.

More than three in four of those groups were established after the initial flowering of the democracy movement between 2014 and 2019.

Most of the imprisonments so far have been on charges of “illegal assembly” using Public Order Ordinances (POOs) introduced under British colonial rule.

The National Security Department established by Beijing to make arrests under the new National Security Law (NSL) has so far made over 170 arrests. On 10 December, the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal extended the reach of the NSL by ruling that it could be extended to cover the lesser charge of “sedition” (an offence under British colonial rule of “exciting disaffection”, “raising discontent”, or “promoting feelings of ill-will”) as well as “subversion” (which carries life sentences).

Publishing “seditious” material repeatedly can bring three years in jail; possession of a seditious publication one year, or two years if repeated.

Putting such cases under the NSL allows greater barriers to be put before bail requests, trials without a jury, secret courts, and transferring trials to the Chinese mainland.

The Tory government has said little about the repression now accelerating in Hong Kong. A report written seven months ago but only published online a month ago, acknowledged that the repression was “using old laws on sedition”.

It has said nothing so far about who introduced these “old laws” or expressed any regret for this legacy of British colonial rule.

So far defendants in trials have often pleaded guilty, for understandable reasons, to avoid incriminating others in the course of their defence, and knowing the legal cards are impossibly stacked against them. Many, like Lee Cheuk Yan, have formally accepted their guilt in court while stating separately that they deny any moral guilt.

But the heroic Chow Hang Tung, the youngest leader of the Tiananmen massacre commemoration group, the HK Alliance, made a defiant statement in court on 4 January, and the room broke out in applause. The judge demanded police take names of those applauding, and made the 15 month sentence on illegal assembly charges consecutive to rather than concurrent with Chow’s other jail sentences, bringing her total to 22 months.

“Today’s verdict”, said Chow, “is nothing but a whitewashing of the June 4 Massacre, another nail in the coffin to bury the truth … another chain that imprisons words.

“The only way to defend freedom of speech is to keep talking. Writing has its inherent vitality and can never be defined by law or authority.

“Even if the candlelight is guilty, I still call on everyone, whether it is June 4th this year or June 4th every year in the future, continue to light the candlelight of resistance.”

The previous semi-pause of repression did not help much with the LegCo elections on 12 December (delayed for 15 months).

Many potential dissident candidates had been arrested, and after the arrests anyone deemed to not to be a Chinese “patriot” was barred from standing. The turnout was only 30%, compared to 53% in 2012 and 58% in 2016. It was 71% in the District Council Elections of 2019.

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