Speech to be delivered at the session on “Empowering Journalists and Ensuring Information Freedom in Oppressive Regimes” at the Japan Hong Kong Democracy Summit jointly organized by Lady Liberty Hong Kong and Institute for Global Governance Research of Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, 17 June 2024

Why do we need an English media platform for the Hong Kong diaspora communities?

Patrick Poon, Co-Director of The Hong Konger

Hong Kong used to be an international media hub. Many international media used to have their Asian headquarters in Hong Kong. They covered many major events, including Hong Kong’s handover from Britain to China in 1997, mass rally against the Article 23 legislation in 2003, the Umbrella Movement in 2014, the violent clashes during the “Anti-Extradition Bill” protests in 2019, the impact of the National Security Law which was passed in 2020 as well as the passage of the Article 23 legislation earlier this year and all the mass arrests and trials of political dissidents.

Many media platforms, including New York Times and Wall Street Journal, decided to move their Asian headquarters to Taipei, Seoul, Singapore and other places, and their correspondents were also relocated to these cities. Certainly, there is still English media coverage in Hong Kong, but definitely not the scale we used to see in the past. An anonymous survey of the members of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong conducted in May 2023 also found that many foreign journalists in Hong Kong found the working conditions to be increasingly difficult.

As it has become difficult for many Hong Kong journalists to continue their work following the crackdown on Apple Daily and the arrests of its founder Jimmy Lai and other senior executives, we have seen many new Chinese platforms in the diaspora. They have been doing a great job to continue their professional efforts to report what is happening in Hong Kong and in the diaspora communities. We certainly appreciate all these efforts. But we also feel that Hong Kongers or people who have lived in Hong Kong or who are in any way connected with Hong Kong would want to have an English media platform to read news about Hong Kong, not only about politics and current affairs in Hong Kong, but also art and culture, food, lifestyle and other issues of people who are still in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong diaspora communities around the world as well as Hong Kong’s cultural legacy among many other things related to Hong Kong.

It was against this backdrop that we established The Hong Konger earlier this year. In addition to the efforts of the Chinese media platforms in the Hong Kong diaspora, we hope that The Hong Konger can offer a platform for the English-speaking audience to have a better understanding of Hong Kong and Hong Kongers’ identities, cultures and worldviews, not restricted to geographical location. “Hong Kong spirit”, which we often see in Hong Kong’s old movies and hear in various celebrities’ speeches, is an example of how we try to define our cultural identities. Despite the stereotypes, Hong Kong does not only consist of the predominantly Cantonese-speaking ethnic Chinese people, but the city used to be, and hopefully can still be to a certain extent, multicultural and cosmopolitan. Likewise, many Hong Kongers are living in different parts of the world and they often partially assimilate into local cultures while maintaining their Hong Kong identities and cultures. It’s “cultures” in the plural form as there is no single culture in, from and of Hong Kong, the concept but geographical location.

As the situation in Hong Kong is becoming more repressive, it’s inevitable that the news and information from Hong Kong will be more and more like mainland China, meaning that there will be more censorship and self-censorship. Hong Kong will become less multicultural. The Chinese government has already evidently reduced Hong Kong’s culture to be more and more mainlandized.

We believe that The Hong Konger’s existence can help to connect Hong Kongers and people who are culturally related with Hong Kong, and people who are simply interested in Hong Kong. Our writers are located in different parts of the world. That gives us a global reach. As press freedom in Hong Kong is declining, we will gradually rely on the diaspora communities to maintain Hong Kong’s cultures. Diaspora media will become an important part of Hong Kong cultures. 

Nikkei Asia – Opinion: Hong Kongers’ fears of extradition to China are coming true

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.

Whereabouts of Chinese lawyer detained in Laos remains a mystery

Since Chinese human rights lawyer Lu Siwei was taken away and detained by the police in Laos on 27 July 2023 when he was prepared to board a train for Thailand, in the hope of flying to the United States to reunite with his wife Zhang Chunxiao and their daughter, there has been no news about his whereabouts.

Is he still being detained by the police in Laos or has he been deported to China as many have expressed concerns about such possibility?

I’m sure Lu and other Chinese human rights lawyers and activists never have any illusion about safety in Laos, given its grave human rights records, but why would human rights lawyers like Lu Siwei still risk his own safety to cross the Chinese border and try his luck for such a knowingly risky journey?

Like many dissidents in China, Lu Siwei was under tight surveillance by the Chinese authorities. It remains a mystery why the Chinese authorities would allow him to leave China. According to Lu Siwei’s wife Zhang Chunxiao, he possessed a valid Chinese passport and valid visas to Laos and the US. So, it also remains a mystery on what legitimate grounds for the Laotian authorities to arrest him.

United Nations’ human rights experts have raised concern by issuing a statement urging the Laotian authorities not to deport Lu Siwei with reference to the requirements of international human rights law on non-refoulement principle that no one should be returned to a country with potential risk of torture and other ill-treatment. The experts’ opinion echoed the concerns raised in an earlier joint statement by 85 organisations.

Yet, where is Lu Siwei now? It’s another mystery. We can only hope that he’s not yet deported to China, or he would very likely be incarcerated and exposed to potential risk of torture and other ill-treatment considering the harsh treatment and harassment he faced in the past. Like what the UN experts have pointed out, Lu Siwei is “at risk of imminent deportation to China, where there are substantial grounds to believe that he would be in danger of being subjected to irreparable harm upon return, on account of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. He is also at risk of other serious human rights violations, including arbitrary detention or enforced disappearance”.

A friend in the US who has been following the case closely told me that Japan’s voice might be critical in securing Lu Siwei’s safety as she learned from some US diplomats. There have been some Japanese media reports about Lu Siwei’s arrest in Laos but there has no voice from the Japanese government and any Japanese politicians on the case. Being an important actor in the international community, would Japan, the world’s third largest economy and a member of the G7 nations, speak up and raise concerns about Lu Siwei’s arrest and disappearance? It’s actually not a case so remote to Japan’s interest. If Japan keeps silent about such a case, it would give the international community the impression that it endorses or turns a blind eye to China’s transnational repression.

Is the “National Security Law” for Hong Kong really a “law”?

The “National Security Law” for Hong Kong was announced and drafted by the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress. While the text was not made public until the last minutes when the National People’s Congress passed the “law”, there is simply no more discussion on the legitimacy of such a “law”.

Some legal academics have been enthusiastically discussing the content of the “law” and ignore the fact about the odd procedure of passing such a “law”, as if procedural justice is no longer an issue in the rule of law and as if we have no option but to accept that it is already a “law”. We must recognize that discussing the content of this “law” does not justify the peculiar nature of this “law”.

I would not even attempt to discuss any part of this “law” as we should not help to legitimize this “law” as if this is the “reality” we all have to accept.

One key question we need to keep raising is that: this “law, like other legal texts and “laws” in mainland China, have extremely broad and vague definitions and they are often arbitrarily interpreted and applied by the judicial authorities and law enforcement agencies. One example is the definition of the charges of “subverting state powe” and “inciting subversion of state power” under article 105 of the PRC Criminal Law. Dissidents in China are often charged with these two offenses for their online expression. Courts, prosecutors and public security officials have never made any clear and legitimate explanations on what constitute these two offenses. Verdicts of those cases always just show that the courts cannot provide any legal interpretation, if any, to justify their verdicts. However, such offenses are listed in the content of the “National Security Law” for Hong Kong. So, what’s the point for us to pretend that we can actually rationally and meaningfully discuss the content of this so-called “law”?

Pretending to engage in actual discussion of this “law” is like legitimizing it. We should instead continue challenging its legitimacy and the procedural injustice of imposing this “law”.

Opinion: National security law: Hongkongers will soon face what Chinese people have suffered for decades

Published in Hong Kong Free Press on 4 June 2020

By Patrick Poon

I still remember an evening sometime in November 2008 when I received a Skype message from Liu Xiaobo — “Do you have time to have a brief chat?”.

I was a bit surprised that somebody I read about from the 1989 Tiananmen protests and crackdown suddenly sent me that message. I said: “Sure. Thanks, Mr Liu.” Then, we had a brief conversation, the first time and the only time I had a private conversation with him. Nearly 12 years have passed and he passed away in Chinese custody a few years ago despite all the international attention on his case over the years.

What Liu Xiaobo asked me about was a text he was co-drafting with some liberal writers and public intellectuals in China. He knew that I was working at a small and new NGO for human rights lawyers in China and that some of the board members were pro-democracy legislators in Hong Kong.

At that time, the text was still being drafted but he already sounded very enthusiastic and believed that it could help to create more discussion on improving China’s political system. I could feel that he really looked forward to hearing more discussion about the text and hoped that like-minded and liberal people in Hong Kong could also take part in the conversation. We all later learned that the text was to be “Charter 08”. Then, we all learned the plight of Liu Xiaobo, his detention, sentence and death in the following years.

What the Chinese government accused Liu Xiaobo of was “inciting subversion of state power.” From whatever angle we try to read and understand the charge, I bet nobody can really argue how “Charter 08” (a blueprint of the aspiration of Liu and co-drafters about how they perceived future for China) and six of his articles criticising the Chinese government, could be construed as “inciting” others to “subvert” the powerful regime of Communist China.

I also think many people keep asking questions about what can actually constitute the charge. There are several elements in the charge that continue to make us wonder about the cruel reality of Communist China. It’s entirely up to the state to define what it really means by “inciting,” “subversion” and “state power.”

Certainly, the evidence doesn’t mean much in such political cases in China. It’s the Communist state that can claim who Liu Xiaobo and his co-drafters of “Charter 08” had “incited” and what kind of “subversion” the text could do to the state and what “state” Liu Xiaobo and co-drafters referred to is really different from the “state” the Communist regime refers to.

There are numerous similar cases of “inciting subversion of state power,” “subverting state power,” “separatism,” “inciting separatism” or “leaking state secrets” in China. Surprisingly (or not surprisingly), all those cases are related to organising political parties (like “China Democratic Party”) or writing articles that call for political reform or criticising the Communist regime.

Now, in Hong Kong, we are being forced to accept a so-called “national security law” that is being drafted by Communist China’s regime and imposed onto our city. No matter how hard Hong Kong officials and pro-Beijing figures have been trying to make us believe that this “law” would be different from the one in China and how Hong Kong is obliged to enact such a “law,” we need to strongly and repeatedly ask about cases like Liu Xiaobo and other dissidents in China.

There are numerous commentaries telling us Hongkongers what it means for the “Hong Kong version” of “national security law” to be drafted by the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress.

Many so-called China “experts” are attempting to explain to us the legal reasoning and justification of this “law” and some lamented how we “missed” the opportunity to pass the controversial Article 23 legislation in our legislature back in 2003 and that now it has led to the much more radical approach by Beijing to forcibly impose the law on us.

No matter how much the attention is now focused on the sanctions imposed by the US government, we here in Hong Kong will face, perhaps not immediately, what mainland Chinese people have been facing for decades — punishment for expressing political opinions that are against the government.

Are we going to see tragic cases like Liu Xiaobo in Hong Kong? I hope not, but what can we expect? I sincerely hope that the attention on Hong Kong won’t only be on how sanctions will impact our economy. Universal values, including freedom of expression, are something we truly care about.

Opinion: The attitudes of the Hong Kong gov’t and police are fueling constant protests and clashes

Published in Hong Kong Free Press on 20 May 2020

By Patrick Poon

Nobody really likes to endure the heat and humidity of Hong Kong’s streets when staging a protest, not to mention the potential risk of arrest and harsh treatment nowadays.

I believe most young people may have preferred to be playing video games and using Instagram before Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam attempted to pass the controversial Anti-Extradition Bill in June 2019. But the Hong Kong government and the police managed to ensure the political awakening of the city’s young and middle-aged people who were previously perhaps uninterested in politics. They have ensured protests have become part of Hong Kong’s youth culture.

Nobody could have imagined how the movement would have progressed into a continuous confrontation between citizens and the police. During the Umbrella Movement in 2014, the case of seven police officers beating up social worker and activist Ken Tsang in a dark corner stirred up so much public anger that the officers were charged and sentenced. But since the Anti-Extradition Bill protests last year, police officers have been enjoying impunity for using force in the name of dispersing crowds and arresting protesters.

Some people might ask why demonstrators persist, saying that everything should return to business as usual, especially with the city’s economy hit further by the coronavirus outbreak. Who would want to take to the streets if there was another viable option, such as fair and genuine universal suffrage of Hong Kong’s leader and the Legislative Council?

Yet, it is actually the mischievous attitude of the local and national government that has shaped the current protest culture — in particular, the actions of Carrie Lam and the Hong Kong police. The government simply ignores protesters’ demands. There has been no independent investigation of the excessive use of police force in handling the protests. And all of this has contributed to endless protests and clashes.

Hong Kong officials have been trying hard to divert public attention away from police violence whilst discrediting protesters as “hooligans.” They, and pro-Beijing politicians, call for ending violence at the same time as persuade the public to turn a blind eye to police violence. They claim the force has been restrained and acted within guidelines, but no sensible person would ever believe this.

The report released by Hong Kong’s Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC) on 15 May will only fuel more public anger, and thus more protests in future. It will not help reduce clashes between protesters and police and will only intensify the problem. The conclusion of the report simply reinforced the need to have a truly independent investigation, instead of a toothless agency to do window dressing for the police. The report used biased “evidence” and ignored facts. It’s just like a piece of propaganda issued to block public scrutiny and has zero credibility. And who knows what the consequences would be, if any, should the police fail to follow the IPCC’s recommendations.

According to the report, the council received as many as 1,755 complaints over police behaviour during demonstrations and incidents which took place between 9 June 2019 and March 2020. It also looked more closely at six key events, including the Yuen Long mob attack on 21 July 2019 and police operations at Prince Edward MTR station on 31 August 2019.

For the Yuen Long mob attacks, the police were criticised for being absent while white-clad mobs were attacking the people at the train station. However, the IPCC only said that there were “deficiencies in Police deployment and other Police action in response to the events.” For such comments, there is no scrutiny of what responsibility the police should bear for being absent at the scene and the ensuing public outcry over the evidence that suggested potential collusion between the police and triad gangs.

And the report claimed that the police deployment at Prince Edward station was fine. Did the council look into the numerous first-hand videos and interview eye-witnesses to collect evidence for their “investigation”? Is the council suggesting that the 1,755 complaints are groundless?

When it was the “good old days” for peaceful protest, police were helpful in arranging routes for protesters. I personally took part in many of them over the years. The notification sent to the police and the issue of a “letter of no-objection” were merely matters of formality. But that time has long gone. People are now left with nothing effective. The lack of response from the government, and the lack of choice to achieve the demands, just pushes us all — the citizens — to continue our fight. It’s the government that pushes citizens to become protesters.

China: Disbarment of Human Rights Lawyers

Ten years ago, I co-drafted a statement about the revocation of legal practice licenses of Tang Jitian and Liu Wei, two prominent human rights lawyers in China, with the New York-based Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers when I was working at the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group. The Committee for Human Rights Protection of Taipei Bar Association also co-signed the statement.

Ten years on, surprisingly (or in fact not surprisingly), many of the concerns we raised in the statement, especially the relevant provisions of the PRC Law on Lawyers and other related regulations of the All-China Lawyers Association, remain the legal weapons for the Chinese authorities to disbar lawyers whom they accuse of stirring up trouble in courtrooms or any other behaviours, including expressing their opinions on social events online, that the Chinese government doesn’t like.

Article 49(1), Clause 6, of the PRC Law on Lawyers, is the legal provision often cited by the judicial authorities in China to disbar criminal lawyers. What constitutes the meaning of “disturbing the order of the court and interfering with normal litigation” is ambiguous, and thus making lawyers vulnerable and falling into trap if they confront judges in court.

According to Tang Jitian and Liu Wei, the presiding judge of the Luzhou City Intermediate People’s Court in Sichuan interrupted them more than ten times during the presentation of their defense statements for their client, a Falun Gong practitioner, on 27 April 2009. The presiding judge also ignored the two lawyers’ requests to stop someone sitting in the public gallery from video-recording the court proceedings. So, the lawyers felt that they could no longer continue their defense work for their client.

What the lawyers chose to do was to walk out from the courtroom in protest against the judge’s behaviours.

From whatever jurisdictions, would the two lawyers’ actions constitute “disturbing the order of the court and interfering with normal litigation” under such situations? What other options would they have?

Let’s look at the laws and regulations in China that require the proper behaviours in courtrooms. According to the “Court Rules of the People’s Courts of the People’s Republic of China” (which was amended in 2016), Article 17, Clause 4, of the amended law (which was Article 9, Clause 1, in old rules), members of the public sitting in the public gallery must not make audio-recordings or video-recordings or take pictures. The two lawyers only requested the presiding judge to follow this rule but the judge ignored.

Article 36 of the Law on Lawyers requires that “the defense statements of a lawyer appointed as a legal representative or criminal defense lawyer and his/her right to engage in criminal defense are safeguarded in accordance with the law” and Article 37 (Clause 1 and Clause 2) also states that “the representation and defense statements presented in court by a lawyer shall not be subject to legal prosecution, except for statements that compromise national security, maliciously defame others, or seriously disrupt the court order”. So, did the presiding judge comply with these legal requirements?

We can also take a look of international human rights standards. Article 16 of the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers (1990) requires “governments [to] ensure that lawyers (a) are able to perform all of their professional functions without intimidation, hindrance, harassment or improper interference ;…(c) shall not suffer, , or be threatened with, prosecution or administrative, economic or other sanctions for any action taken in accordance with recognized professional duties, standards and ethics.”

More recently, many human rights lawyers in China are prepared to join the force of “disbarred lawyers” as more of them become even more active and vocal in their legal advocacy in courtroom and in their human rights work. Their legal practice licenses were either revoked or suspended as a result of their legal defense work and human rights work. In 2018, a group of lawyers, including Qin Yongpei, Wen Donghai, Wang Yu and Sui Muqing, sarcastically established the “Disbarred China Lawyers Club” (中国律师后俱乐部). Other prominent lawyers who were disbarred include Yu Wensheng (who is currentl detained), Liu Xiaoyuan and Li Jinxing.

Two days ago, human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang eventually managed to return to Beijing to reunite with his wife Li Wenzu and their son Quan Quan after he was released from prison in early April 2020 and was said to be “quarantined” in his hometown Jinan. He was detained during the 709 crackdown in 2015 and serving a 4.5-year sentence for “subverting state power”. His “crime”, like many other human rights lawyers, is just about representing human rights cases and expressing views on social and human rights issues on the internet.

With an increasing number of disbarred human rights lawyers, we simply need to question how China can still claim to be respecting lawyers’ rights and what it means to the legal profession in China. Only lawyers who keep quiet about political and social issues are allowed to survive? That’s not what rule of law and freedom of expression mean.

Freedom of Peaceful Assembly at risk in Hong Kong

As I’m writing the chapter on culture and freedom of expression in Hong Kong for my thesis, I’m writing this short passage to study the ridiculous nature and lawlessness of the Hong Kong police’s move today to arrest 15 pro-democracy activists for “illegal assembly”.

Amid the pandemic of COVID-19 (which evidently known to originate from Wuhan city in Hubei province in China), the Hong Kong government, obviously aided and abetted by the Chinese government, once again shocked the world to arrest organisers and participants of protests in Hong Kong. This time, Apple Daily’s founder Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee, veteran pro-democracy activist and founding chairman of Democratic Party of Hong Kong, former legislators Albert Ho, Margaret Ng, Lee Cheuk-yan, Leung Kwok-hung (better known as “Long Hair”), Yeung Sum, Cyd Ho, Sin Chung-kai and Au Nok-hin, lawmaker Leung Yiu-chung, activists Avery Ng, Raphael Wong, Figo Chan and Richard Tsoi are the 15 people arrested in the abrupt police raid on Saturday.

This news is shocking for many in Hong Kong as everyone is occupied with dealing with the coronavirus pandemic like many people around the world. The Hong Kong government and the Hong Kong police instead spend their energy to take this sudden move to threaten Hong Kong people’s freedom of peaceful assembly.

They were arrested on suspicion of organising the protests between 18 August 2019 protest when 1.7 million people in Hong Kong joined and 1 October 2019. The huge turnout on 18 August was due to the public discontent over the Hong Kong police’s inaction to investigate the violent attack by a mob of over 100 rod-wielding men dressed in white against black-clad protesters and citizens in Yuen Long MTR station on 21 July 2019. At least 45 people were injured. Up till now, the police has done little or in fact nothing to investigate the attack but they instead arrest the organisers of the protests.

Freedom of peaceful assembly is protected under Article 22 of Hong Kong Basic Law which reads: “Hong Kong residents shall have freedom of speech, of the press and of publication; freedom of association, of assembly, of procession and demonstration; and the right and freedom to form and join trade unions, and to strike.” Article 17 of Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance also protects the right of peaceful assembly, which reads: “The right of peaceful assembly shall be recognized. No restrictions may be placed on the exercise of this right other than those imposed in conformity with the law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order (ordre public), the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.” This provision is actually taken from article 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the UK extended to Hong Kong in 1976.

Strangely, despite of these protections, sections 13–17 in the Public Order Ordinance contradict the protection of the rights to peaceful assembly. These sections have given too much power to the police. For those who want to stage a public procession, the requirement is to inform the Commissioner of Police of the intention and that the Commissioner “notifies the person that he has no objection to the procession taking place or is taken to have issued a notice of no objection”. So, it is NOT any kind of application or seeking permission from the police but it’s only a matter about notification. The UN Human Rights Committee, which reviews the implementation of the ICCPR, repeatedly raised concerns about the provisions in the Public Order Ordinance that “the application in practice of certain terms contained in the Public Order Ordinance, inter alia, “disorder in public places” or “unlawful assembly”, which may facilitate excessive restriction the Covenant rights”. In the Concluding Observations of Hong Kong’s report in 1999, the Human Rights Committee made it very clear that it is “concerned that the Public Order Ordinance could be applied to restrict unduly enjoyment of the rights guaranteed in article 21 of the Covenant”.

What is the biggest concern here is the arbitrary nature of what “disorder in public places” or “unlawful assembly” means while the requirement for holding a demonstration stated above is to get a “notice of no objection” from the Commissioner of Police. What are the criteria for getting the “notice of no objection”? The police can have many excuses to refuse to issue a “notice of no objection”, such as citing national security or public safety concerns. Yet, it’s simply the discretion of the police to decide what would be the criteria to strike a balance between protecting the right to peaceful assembly and the legitimate restriction of the right. One may say that it would be the job of the courts to give clear guidelines on making judgement in this regard. However, it’s questionable how we can believe the courts are functioning independently enough (note: I’m not saying the courts in Hong Kong are not independent but how independent they are is indeed an issue) as Beijing’s influence is evidently shown in many recent court judgements on cases involving freedom of peaceful assembly and the problematic term of “unlawful assembly”.

Controlling Religions with Chinese Characteristics

Wrote this article for Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs: https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/controlling-religions-with-chinese-characteristics

Hong Kong needs new free English press

When I was studying in primary and secondary schools, my English teachers always asked us to find 10 vocabularies in each of the news reports or feature articles in the South China Morning Post and look out their meanings from Oxford English Dictionary as a weekly assignment. We were also encouraged to read the Young Post every day to develop our interest in reading English writings. As a Hongkonger, my native language is Cantonese. Learning English was so difficult for people like me as we didn’t have any chance to speak English at home and we could live comfortably with Cantonese only. Being able to speak and write fluent English was considered, which I think still true nowadays, superior and to have better chance to climb the social ladder. However, I would say that many of my classmates and myself were not so interested in what was actually reported in the newspaper.

After finishing my bachelor’s degree in comparative literature and English literature at the University of Hong Kong, I was thinking how I could find a job to further develop my interest in English writings other than teaching English, which many of my classmates did. So, I was immature and impetuous enough to spend my mother’s saving to do my postgraduate studies in journalism at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. I chose to study journalism as I was pretty fed up with studying the complicated cultural theories – with all kinds of jargons like postmodernism, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, semiotics, post-colonialism, psychoanalysis, feminism, etc. I found myself more interested in reading and writing materials with simpler English sentence structures. Also, I found myself more interested in facts and current affairs than literary and imaginative writings.

During the year of studying journalism in Britain, I spent most of my time reading the Guardian, The Independent, The Times, News Statesman, and sometimes The Financial Times and The Daily Telegraph. The investigative reports in The Observer and The Sunday Times were amazing. I was so much excited of dreaming to be even just an assistant in an investigative reporting team in a newspaper or magazine. Despite all the years of learning English, my English is still very much “Hong Kong English”. However, the experience of learning journalism in Britain was really eye-opening. It’s not the experience of living in Britain, which was tainted with lots of discrimination, but the experience of learning journalism and the experiences of doing internship at FT.com and the visit at BBC World Service had profound influence on me. After finishing my studies and before leaving Britain, I couldn’t wait and sent my application to the South China Morning Post for the position of cadet reporter.

After I returned to Hong Kong, I was lucky to be given a chance to do a job interview and was even luckier to be offered the job. The cadetship was an interesting experience. Rotating to various desks – business, China, local news, political news, court, “Focus” section of the editorial page, and feature – it was such a great experience to learn from other senior reporters and editors about how to do basic reporting and writing features. Then, I spent about another 1.5 years at the SCMP as a court reporter before most reporters of the court reporting team were laid off at that time due to restructuring of the editorial office in early 2003. I’m not sure if any of the editors or reporters at the SCMP still remember me, who was just a very junior reporter at that time. But I felt much honoured to be able to work with some of the best reporters at that time, most of whom either resigned or were laid off later. Then, I changed to work in human rights organizations and left journalism. Over the years, I have been hearing more and more news about some former colleagues leaving the SCMP and great reporters like Jasper Becker, Mark O’Neill, Paul Mooney leaving the newspaper. Until a few days ago, four famous columnists Philip Bowring, Steve Vines, Frank Ching and Kevin Rafferty, were reportedly axed by the SCMP. I really feel that Hong Kong really needs more alternative English media outlets (while Hong Kong Standard has long been unable to compete with SCMP’s monopoly).

Some people might argue that there are more Mandarin-speakers than English-speakers in Hong Kong. Why do we need another English press now? English, as an international language, is still very important in Hong Kong as we still need to communicate with people in other countries. We can’t simply learn Mandarin and think that’s enough for doing business as China and Mainland Chinese are becoming so self-sufficient that they might think they are the centre of the universe. Also, it’s important to have an independent and professional English media to tell the international community what is actually happening in Hong Kong and what are the views of the Hong Kong people instead of only relying on the SCMP.

I’m just so happy and excited to learn that there will be a new and independent English media platform in Hong Kong – Hong Kong Free Press – and that it’s getting more and more support not just from the expatriate community but also many local people in Hong Kong (including people like me who just speak and write “Hong Kong English”). The emergence of the Internet has significantly changed our habits to read news and our participation in writing about news and current affairs. I hope that there will be even more English and Cantonese media platforms so that we will be able to maintain our freedom of press and freedom of expression in Hong Kong.