Article published in Nikkei Asia on Hong Kong’s civil society
Have published my first article after moving to Tokyo:
The crushing of Hong Kong’s civil society will be felt by all
National Security Law crackdown puts investors and business at risk too
Patrick Poon
July 24, 2022 05:00 JST
Patrick Poon is a visiting researcher at the Institute of Comparative Law at Meiji University in Tokyo.
The space for civil society in Hong Kong has drastically shrunk since the introduction of the city’s National Security Law in 2020.
Simply talking about fears of crossing Beijing’s red lines does not adequately describe the scope of the new law. The refusal of Hong Kong and Chinese authorities to say where the lines are has allowed them to arbitrarily restrict Hong Kong people’s freedoms.
Over the previous two decades, I worked as a court reporter and then as a staffer for nongovernmental organizations, including Amnesty International and the Independent Chinese PEN Center, a group promoting free expression.
Hong Kong civil society was vibrant then. When I was with Amnesty and the PEN Center, we could organize all kinds of activities, ranging from staging demonstrations, calling for the release of detained dissidents in China, and arranging for writers and lawyers to meet with their counterparts in Hong Kong.
We never experienced any interference or felt any threat. Even when I was a researcher at Amnesty, I never had to worry much about my safety when I commented on the detention of Chinese dissidents or documented the detention of Uyghurs and Kazakhs in political re-education camps.
I still remember a mainland Chinese telling me upon his arrival in Hong Kong that he “could finally breathe the air of freedom.” It was a time when many young university graduates in Hong Kong were willing to accept relatively low pay to work in roles that advanced the cause of human rights and democracy in China.
During that time, I was able to communicate with many high-profile mainland Chinese dissidents without fear. Late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo had so much hope for Hong Kong that he contacted me in late 2008 to help invite prominent pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong to co-sign “Charter 08,” a manifesto initially signed by 303 Chinese dissident intellectuals and human rights activists.
Many of those Hong Kong figures, some now in prison, were among the first batch of co-signatories. There were few fears when they decided to sign the charter.
It was unimaginable at that time that Hong Kong’s freedom of expression and freedom of assembly were at risk. Today, even prayer meetings or masses to commemorate the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen incident are considered too sensitive to hold.
Talks on human rights in China and Hong Kong, public or closed-door, at universities in Hong Kong were routine then. But now, people will hesitate or self-censor before planning such activities. The notion of being able to invite human rights lawyers from China to share their experiences with the general public is unimaginable today.
In the past, police officers were friendly and would even discuss protest routes with organizers. Rallies went ahead without explicit police permission, as the force would routinely issue letters of no-objection once informed of plans.
Today, anybody gathering to demonstrate in public places like Victoria Park, where the annual June 4 candlelight vigil to commemorate Tiananmen used to take place, would be questioned by police and warned they would be charged with illegal assembly if they did not disperse.
As a former court reporter, I know how difficult it has become to cover Hong Kong legal proceedings. I covered many trials of protesters accused of “obstruction in a public place” for staging small-scale protests at locations such as the forecourt of Beijing’s official representative office.
Bail was normally granted, the presumption of innocence was well observed, and reporters felt few restrictions on reporting open trials.
Since then, so much has changed. Even reporting details about bail applications has been restricted by the courts. Defendants accused of nonviolent offenses are spending years in pretrial detention.
Yet there are many, both from the pro-Beijing camp as well as expatriate business people, who claim that life has gone on as usual under the National Security Law. This is similar to what was heard in China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen incident.
Those with vested interests might not miss the civil liberties that have disappeared. But we do not have to wait to see something like the current vanished bank deposit scandal in Henan Province to happen in Hong Kong to realize that economic matters cannot be segregated.
Nobody will be exempted from the impact of the dismantling of civil society. Hong Kong business people who have sought help from NGOs and lawyers with business troubles in mainland China have learned to their sorrow the difficulty of fighting for justice in a society without checks and balances.
It is easy to imagine how further mainlandization of Hong Kong’s system will create more problems for everyone.
