Free Speech finally dead in Hong Kong

July 2021 was an epochal moment in Hong Kong's history, as the first-ever conviction of a pro-democracy activist was effected.

 Free Speech finally dead in Hong Kong

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• The story: July 2021 was an epochal moment in Hong Kong's history, as the first-ever conviction of a pro-democracy activist was effected.
• Details: A panel of judges said emphatically it found Tong Ying-kit, the first person to face trial under the national-security law imposed by Beijing last year, guilty of terrorism and inciting secession. The motorcycle that Tong, a 24-year-old former waiter, was driving crashed into riot police on July 1, 2020, during a demonstration against the national-security law. A black flag bearing the popular protest mantra flew off the back of his bike when the crash occurred.
• No slogans, no songs: The ruling is significant in Hong Kong’s recent history, criminalizing slogans from the pro-democracy protests and setting a precedent that the mere uttering of any phrase or singing of any song that irks the government can be deemed criminal. The dozens of government critics sitting in the city’s jails, awaiting their day in court for allegedly violating the security law, will be next. The verdict marks the end of free speech in Hong Kong. (Tong's slogan was “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times”)
• Handpicked oppressors: The case was heard not by a jury but by a panel of three judges handpicked by the city’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, and Tong was held in pretrial detention for more than a year. Lam made national security the primary focus of her government’s work, and she mentions it in nearly all of her remarks. This obsessiveness bleeds into the absurd. Days before Tong was sentenced, five speech therapists were arrested on sedition charges. Their alleged crime: publishing children’s books featuring cartoon wolves and sheep to tell the story of the city’s 2019 protests.

1. The Hong Kong Police Force, largely allowed to act with impunity during the sometimes violent protests, has been granted seemingly unlimited and unchecked power.
2. Alice Mak, a pro-Beijing lawmaker, wondered aloud why anyone was concerned. “If it’s a police state, why not?” she asked. “I don’t think there’s any problem with a police state.”

• History in the present: Prosecutors relied heavily on the expertise of Lau Chi-pang, a pro-Beijing history professor at Lingnan University, in Hong Kong, who drew on Chinese history to argue that the meaning of some words within the slogan had remained unchanged for more than 1,000 years and advocated for overthrowing the government. The defense called two professors; Francis Lee, of the journalism school at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who carried out research during the protests, said that the slogan could have numerous meanings. The three judges, however, wrote that this argument did not rule out that secession could be one of the meanings.
• Rule by law: The verdict will be welcomed by Beijing and its Hong Kong loyalists, who have unquestioningly fallen in line with their new marching orders and repeat unwaveringly that the national-security law has greatly improved the city. At the same time, they have attempted to spin the law’s impact, saying that freedom of speech remains unharmed in Hong Kong.
• Summary: PRC's authoritarianism has finally crushed Hong Kong's vibrant democracy, which was anyway a fait accompli given Xi Jinping's approach to statecraft.

 

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