CIVICUS speaks about the passing of a new security law and the state of civic space in Hong Kong with Patrick Poon.
Patrick is currently a visiting researcher of the University of Tokyo. He is an advisor for the UK-based ‘The 29 Principles’, which supports human rights lawyers in China and Hong Kong, a board member of Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and advisor for the Tokyo-based Asian Lawyers Network.
Patrick was a researcher with Amnesty International’s International Secretariat from 2013 to 2020, mainly covering human rights defenders in China and human rights violations in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. He was also a board member of Amnesty International Hong Kong from 2009 to 2013 and the executive secretary and a board member of the Independent Chinese PEN Center from 2009 to 2013.
What are the likely impacts of the new law and what are the government’s motivations?
Hong Kong has lost all freedoms of assembly, association and expression since the forcible enactment of the National Security Law in 2020. Now, it’s even worse because on 19 March 2024, the authorities passed a new security law – Article 23 – that gives the government new powers to crack down on all forms of dissent. Article 23 is the second such security law since 2020, when the authorities cracked down following months of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
The law will be used to intimidate and further restrict rights in Hong Kong. The punishment for national security offences is increased to life imprisonment. This means the government can take away anybody’s freedom if it deems them to be ‘endangering national security’. It’s just so arbitrary. There are literally no checks and balances.
The Chinese government wants to have complete control of the city. The puppet Hong Kong government simply does whatever it can to fulfil its master’s wish. The new law effectively suffocates civil society further in the name of ‘safeguarding national security’. In the eyes of the Communist Chinese regime and the Hong Kong government, passing this law to legitimise their control is more important than anything else.
What are some of the crimes in the new law and how could they affect people outside Hong Kong?
Sedition, secession, subversion, incitement, leaking state secrets and collusion with foreign forces are the offences of major concern. These are so broadly and vaguely defined that the Hong Kong government can easily abuse them to crack down on dissidents.
Hong Kong ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), article 19 of which protects freedom of expression, stating that the only legitimate reasons for limiting freedom of expression are to protect national security, public order or public health or morals. However, Article 23 imposes restrictions on all forms of freedom of expression, making it extremely risky for people to criticise the government.
The Hong Kong government is also threatening that the law could be applied to people outside Hong Kong. It’s still unclear how this can be implemented. Perhaps the Hong Kong government just assumes that western democracies would comply with such a draconian law and hand over Hong Kong dissidents living in their countries? How could that happen? There are checks and balances in western democracies. It will be a big scandal if any western democracies succumb to such unreasonable and illegal transnational repression.
What has the response been so far from Hong Kong activists and the international community, and what more can the international community do?
A total of 145 organisations, including major Hongkonger organisations based outside the territory, issued a joint statement condemning the draconian law. When the law was gazetted on 23 March 2024, Hongkongers around the world, including those in Australia, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, the UK and the USA, held demonstrations and rallies to protest against the law. The message is clear. We are just not afraid of the threats imposed by the Hong Kong government. We are just not afraid of the transnational application of the draconian law.
The law is not about national security. It’s about the authoritarian regime’s control. The regime is once again trying to equate the Communist Party with the Chinese nation by claiming to be safeguarding national security by enacting the law. Nobody should be silent about that, but instead we should point out the issue and continue to explain to as many people as possible why this new legislation is merely a draconian law that does nothing other than legitimising and strengthening the authoritarian regime’s control.
The international community should continue to raise concerns about the draconian nature of this law. We should not just let it go. What the Hong Kong and the Chinese governments have done is set a very bad precedent of how an authoritarian regime will be tolerated if we don’t speak up against such repressive legislation. It’s crystal clear that what the Hong Kong government has done has violated the ICCPR. The international community should stand up against such tyranny.
Civic space in Hong Kong is rated ‘closed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with 29 Principles through its website and follow @patrickpoon on Twitter.
