Even the fast-acting and ruthless Nazi regime did not, during its twelve years of life, manage to check all the boxes on its totalitarian to-do list as quickly or thoroughly as the dictator and sub-dictators would have liked. (See The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939 by Richard J. Evans.) So we can understand why, five years after the National Security Law of 2020 accelerated the crackdown on rights and freedom in Hong Kong, only now are the city’s newly empowered potentates acting to “tighten prison visit rules on national security grounds” (Reuters, July 7, 2025).
The visitors
We all know what kind of people would jeopardize national security via their interactions with incarcerated opponents of the Chinese Communist Party: “lawyers, religious personnel and doctors.”
In a government paper submitted to the legislature, the Security Bureau said there had been instances of prison visits being abused under the pretext of “humanitarian relief” in an attempt to influence prisoners and to “arouse their hatred” of the Chinese and Hong Kong governments.
Wow, what a long shot. How can one possibly “arouse hatred” for the Chinese Communist Party state in the breasts of prisoners whose lives have been destroyed by the Chinese Communist Party state because they spoke out against the Chinese Communist Party state, the symbol and mascot of which, Winnie-the-Pooh, is so lovable?
Nevertheless, despite the virtual impossibility of provoking the enmity of the inmates they’ve been visiting, some lawyers, religious personnel and doctors apparently have been trying to do just that—ignoring the risk to national security that must ensue if unjustly imprisoned people suddenly, out of the blue, began to resent and oppose their captors.
The Tang exception
How Hong Kong officials found out about these attempts to corrupt the judgment and sensibilities of prisoners is a mystery—unless the conversations in Hong Kong prisons between visitors and inmates are not quite as confidential as they are theoretically supposed to be.
Under the proposal, the Correctional Services Department could apply for a magistrates’ warrant giving it the right to block or impose conditions on prisoner contact with specific lawyers and doctors.
Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, or Basic Law, enshrines legal professional privilege to safeguard confidential legal advice between lawyers and their clients, including in court and prison, and the right to choose a lawyer.
But Security Secretary Chris Tang told lawmakers that while prisoners don’t lose all their rights, “the rights they enjoy are not the same as those of people not in prison, and the time they can exercise these rights and freedoms must be limited by the need to maintain national security, discipline and order.”
In China, you get the full panoply of rights, including the right as an unjustly incarcerated prisoner to the safeguarding of the confidentiality of legal advice between lawyer and client. Moreover, as a sacred principle of the PRC constitution and code of law, no right can be violated unless the state wants to violate it, and not a moment before.
A veteran lawyer who did not wish to reveal his identity due to the sensitivity of the matter told Reuters that this proposal further “extends the power” of authorities over those accused of national security offences.
Derek Chu, the founder of prison rights advocacy group Waiting Bird told Reuters that it would further silence individuals such as barrister and activist Chow Hang Tung, who has remained outspoken even behind bars.
“It cuts off the support to the political prisoners inside, further isolating them and undermining the will of those who are willing to fight for justice and human rights,” Chu said.
After the new restrictions are “gazetted [published] directly into law by the government,” the legislature will “vet” them, Reuters says. But Hong Kong’s legislature has become a rubber-stamp body, a place stocked with submissive so-called Patriots. These days, no one in the opposition is allowed to run for office.
