Speech delivered at the panel of the Court of the Citizens of the World at The Hague on 7 July 2024

It’s great to participate and speak about Hong Kong’s human rights problems and the authoritarian nature of the so-called “National Security Law” and Article 23 legislation, which only show how repressive the CCP China regime and its puppet government in Hong Kong are.

Photo credit: https://x.com/naveednoormal/status/1810054689116880957?s=61&t=l8-N53McbjQAwyO_9stSxg

Patrick Poon, Visiting Researcher, University of Tokyo

Thanks very much to the Court of the Citizens of the World for inviting me to join today’s panel.

Hong Kong used to be an international financial and media hub. Many international media used to have their Asian headquarters in Hong Kong. They covered many major events, including Hong Kong’s handover from Britain to China in 1997, mass rally against the Article 23 legislation of the Hong Kong Basic Law in 2003, the Umbrella Movement in 2014, the violent clashes during the “Anti-Extradition Bill” protests in 2019, the impact of the National Security Law which was passed in 2020 as well as the passage of the Article 23 legislation earlier this year and all the mass arrests and trials of political dissidents.

I used to be a court reporter at the South China Morning Post, a major English newspaper in Hong Kong, in 2000–2003. Many of the national security judges appointed by the government used to be logical and reasonable. They used to respect legal principles and the rule of law. But now, they simply ignore all these. They reject bail applications just simply because they claim that they are not sure if the detained pro-democracy activists, including many of the defendants of the 47 pro-democracy activists case, such as former student leader Joshua Wong, legal scholar Benny Tai and many others, would commit the same national security offenses if they would be granted. So, where is the Common Law tradition of presumption of innocence? The red line and the definitions of the so-called national security offenses have become so ambiguous that it has nothing to do with national security but only the Chinese Communist Party’s attempt to control its powers and its authoritarian rule forever.

As it has become difficult for many Hong Kong journalists to continue their work following the crackdown on Apple Daily and the arrests of its founder Jimmy Lai and other senior executives, we have seen that more and more diaspora media platforms have been established to report news about Hong Kong, not only about politics and current affairs in Hong Kong, but also art and culture, food, lifestyle and other issues of people who are still in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong diaspora communities around the world as well as Hong Kong’s cultural legacy among many other things related to Hong Kong. I am also involved in establishing a new English diaspora media platform The Hong Konger, hoping that we can contribute to preserve Hong Kong and Hong Kongers’ culture.

As the situation in Hong Kong is becoming more repressive, it’s inevitable that the news and information from Hong Kong will be more and more like mainland China, meaning that there will be more censorship and self-censorship. Hong Kong will become less multicultural. The Chinese government has already evidently reduced Hong Kong’s culture to be more and more mainlandized. It’s just similar to what has been happening among Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongolians, Kazakhs and many other ethnic groups oppressed by the Communist China regime.

Many of my friends are now in prison in Hong Kong. Barrister and Hong Kong activist Chow Hang-Tung, one of my best friends and the subject of the documentary “She’s in Jail” that I was also involved in the production, is a vivid example of a legal professional being targeted by the authoritarian regime in Hong Kong. She has also been detained for several years and is still yet to know when she will be tried and sentenced. We can see the common features of authoritarian regimes.

We still don’t know when Chow Hang-Tung, fellow leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance – human rights lawyer and prominent politician and my former boss Albert Ho, trade union leader and prominent politician Lee Cheuk-Yan – and many other friends in China and Hong Kong who are still detained simply because they uphold their human rights will be eventually released. Let us not forget them and continue to raise their cases whenever and wherever possible. I still believe that justice will prevail.

Thank you.