The Washington Post says that “With new security law, Hong Kong doubles down on repression.”
This seems to be true mainly of the length of the penalties imposed for various infractions. My impression, which may be disproved in the months and years to come, is that all the same people in Hong Kong who have been readily subject to arrest and imprisonment for challenging the state since China imposed the National Security Law of 2020 will still be readily subject to the same fate when Hong Kong’s new National Security Law is enacted.
But perhaps Hong Kong police, judges, and other government functionaries will feel even more comfortable going after little old ladies who say “I like democracy” if they have twice as much formally codified legal nonsense to back them up.
The Post also observes that March 2024 “marks another depressing milestone in Hong Kong’s painful descent into authoritarian repression.”
Forty-seven politicians, scholars and activists began their fourth year under arrest on charges of violating the severe national security law that Beijing imposed on the city in 2020.
The 47 were charged on Feb. 28, 2021, accused of conspiring to subvert state power. What they actually did was conduct an unofficial primary election among pro-democracy candidates for the city’s legislative council, in hopes of identifying the strongest candidates and increasing their chances of winning a council majority. Some 600,000 ordinary citizens voted in the primary, despite threats from Beijing that this normal exercise in democracy might threaten China’s national security.
Since the arrests, only 13 have been granted bail under stringent conditions, leaving 34 others in prison as the trial, the largest under the law in Hong Kong to date, has dragged on. Prosecutors have often stretched credulity trying to prove that running in a primary and trying to win a majority of council seats amounted to a crime. Closing arguments began in November, and the three handpicked judges—there are no juries in national security crimes—have said they need at least three or four months to reach a verdict…. The defendants face life in prison….
The government has said the new law will only target a “small minority” of people out to undermine national security. That’s the same logic officials used to justify the earlier national security law. And now dozens of people languish in prison for no other crimes than exercising their right to speak freely and to demand a freer, more democratic system.
If Hong Kong’s new national security law had been in place back in February 2021, would the situation of these 47 innocent people be worse than it is now? Maybe. Would their number be 94 or 188 instead of 47? Maybe. Like other governments, totalitarian governments excel at getting worse and worse.
Also see:
Gov.hk: Safeguarding National Security Bill
“A bill to improve the law for safeguarding national security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China; and to provide for related matters.”
StopTheChinazis.org: “Hong Kong’s Blathering New National Security Law Hits Harder”
“The penalties for Hongkongers who talk out of turn may be harsher. But Hong Kong officials do not need ‘more’ power to suppress dissent, since they already have all the power that mainland officials have to suppress it.”
