Benedict Rogers: Hong Kong democracy movement must unite to defeat its common enemy

If it is allowed to take over Hong Kong with impunity, the Chinese Communist Party regime won't stop there.

Twelve Hong Kongers are in jail in mainland China, simply because they attempted to escape Hong Kong to find freedom.

A 19-year-old kid, Tony Chung, is now in jail facing serious charges under Hong Kong’s new draconian national security law, simply because he attempted to seek asylum at the United States consulate.

Hong Kong’s youngest-ever elected legislator, Nathan Law, is now its highest-profile exile after he fled the city to pre-empt his own likely arrest as the national security law was imposed.

And now the Hong Kong police have announced a hotline for the public to report national security violations, inviting people to snoop on each other in what many describe as a new Cultural Revolution.

Certainly what was once one of Asia’s most open cities, a hub not just for international finance but for global media and civil society, branded “Asia’s world city”, is morphing day by day into a template from George Orwell’s 1984.

Yet the outcry from the international community at this destruction of Hong Kong’s freedoms has so far been tepid. The United States has imposed targeted sanctions and made regular robust — and welcome — statements, Britain has made a very generous offer of citizenship to Hong Kongers who hold British National Overseas passports, and a few countries have suspended their extradition agreements with Hong Kong since the imposition of the national security law. But given the speed and scale of the dismantling of Hong Kong’s promised autonomy and freedoms under the “one country, two systems” framework, the global response has so far been disappointing.

The same is true of civil society. Apart from the organisation I co-founded three years ago, Hong Kong Watch, a few Hong Kong diaspora groups such as my friends in Stand with Hong Kong and the Washington, DC-based Hong Kong Democratic Council, and occasional statements from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, few other rights groups have shown interest.

True, a social media campaign for the release of the 12 Hong Kongers in a Shenzhen jail has trended on Twitter, with the hashtag #save12hkyouths, gathering support from as diverse a range of figures as climate change campaigner Greta Thunberg, former Miss World Canada Anastasia Lin, Britain’s activist and radio talk show host Maajid Nawaz, former leader of Britain’s Conservative Party Iain Duncan Smith, former US presidential candidate Senator Mitt Romney, Italy’s former foreign minister Giulio Terzi and politicians from across Europe to Australia. But it took Hong Kong activist Joey Siu and me to get it going.

Nevertheless, it seems that the harsh truth has not yet sunk in for many — the fact that Hong Kong’s freedoms are gone, Hong Kong is no longer the free, open city it was until recently, and that every single Hong Konger is now in grave danger if they have an opinion that the Chinese Communist Party does not like.

And so what of the movement in Hong Kong? What is the future for the brave, entrepreneurial, ingenious Hong Kongers who, whenever they have the free world’s attention, capture our hearts?

Benedict Rogers is the co-founder and Chief Executive of Hong Kong Watch. This article was published in UCA News on 30 October 2020. (Photo: AFP via UCA News)