https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Hong-Kongers-fears-of-extradition-to-China-are-coming-true
Thanks Nikkei Asia for publishing my article and thanks a lot for the editor’s edits!
Also see the full article below:
OPINION
Hong Kongers’ fears of extradition to China are coming true
Case of vanished law student highlights anxieties about proposed security law
Patrick Poon
February 9, 2024 05:00 JST
Patrick Poon is a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo and a member of the board of the Japan-Hong Kong Democracy Alliance. He was previously the greater China researcher for Amnesty International in Hong Kong.
Zeng Yuxuan, a law student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, disappeared four months ago.
Her last known whereabouts was a Hong Kong prison where she was serving a six-month sentence for sedition over her plans to display a banner commemorating the 34th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre and the disappearance of a Hong Kong statue that memorialized the students who were killed.
Friends were waiting to receive her outside the prison in Hong Kong on Oct. 12 but she never appeared. City officials later told local media that she had been sent back to mainland China where she came from. Her close friends have yet to manage to reestablish contact.
Worries about this kind of furtive deportation were exactly what sparked the massive street protests that rocked Hong Kong for much of 2019. Zeng’s case is the first such official deportation from Hong Kong to come to light, but there is little discussion of the case now.
Virtually all protests and even mere gestures of dissent have vanished since Beijing imposed its own national security law on the city in June 2020, setting the stage for a crackdown that has seen dozens of opposition politicians jailed, numerous civic organizations, labor unions and political parties pushed to disband and many publications and bookstores forced to shut.
The 2020 law included provisions allowing suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial. No such cases have been publicly disclosed but some pro-Beijing figures previously suggested that the national security law trial of Jimmy Lai, publisher of shuttered newspaper Apple Daily, could be moved to the mainland amid various controversies.
The Hong Kong government is now poised to tighten political controls further. Last week, officials unveiled the draft of another proposed security law to govern offenses such as the theft of state secrets, treason and foreign interference.
Zeng’s incommunicado situation is a common one I encountered when dealing with mainland Chinese activists as a human rights researcher in Hong Kong. But it is unusual for Hong Kong, which was long a place with freedom of expression and an annual candlelight vigil, held in a public park, commemorating the Tiananmen killings.
In the past, when mainland activists would come to Hong Kong, they would wonder at the degree of freedom residents enjoyed compared with the controls they were subject to at home.
I vividly remember how one human rights lawyer said he would “breathe the freedom” whenever he landed in the city. These days, mainland Chinese friends who now visit lament how Hong Kong has changed and how much it has become like the mainland.
Zeng likely expected to learn about the rule of law and Hong Kong’s prestigious common law system when she came to study in the city. It seems she also felt freer since she could browse the internet in relative freedom to view all kinds of information about China.
Her brush with the law might be a lesson for other mainland Chinese students and Hong Kong residents. The red lines that have been created are deliberately ambiguous such that anyone who might be seen as ever posing a threat to the current order can get into trouble at any time.
Ambiguity is a key weapon for the regime to impose fear on the city’s people to silence dissent and suffocate civil society. Definitions under the proposed local security law are just as vague as those in the one instituted by Beijing.
It has been left to the authorities to define what constitutes a “threat” to national security and what constitutes “subversion.” It is also up to the discretion of the authorities about which individuals and organizations to take action against.
The purpose of this governance approach is the exertion of full control to restrict freedoms in the name of maintaining stability and preserving national security.
As the Lunar New Year approaches, Zeng’s friends are concerned about her safety. Is she under round-the-clock surveillance? Is she in detention? Can her relatives visit?
All that remains a mystery. More such mysterious situations can be expected in Hong Kong as the new security law comes into force later this year. Hong Kong is on track to become a police state much like mainland China.
博德的疑惑 Patrick's Doubts 