Benedict Rogers: Let it not take forty years to get world’s conscience awakened
A week ago, I had met for the first time since Britain’s COVID-19 lockdown began in March with a friend in a public place. It was the first time I had been to a restaurant in four months, and the first time I had met another person other than my immediate family socially and publicly in that time.
Our meeting was tinged with hesitancy, sadness and caution – for two reasons.
The first was the virus. We both wore masks right up until our food arrived – a new experience for me. And we put our masks on again as soon as we finished eating.
The second was that the person I was with reminded me that when we had first met, almost four years ago, he was an elected legislator.
He had been elected Hong Kong’s youngest ever member of the Legislative Council, and we met when he visited the British Parliament for the first time. I introduced him, among others, to Lord Alton of Liverpool, who himself had once been the youngest elected Member of Parliament. In Britain, just as the longest serving MP is known as the “Father of the House”, the youngest is the “baby of the House”. As Lord Alton told my friend, “us babies of the House must stick together.”
Four years on, my friend is no longer a legislator. In the past four years he has been a political prisoner and an activist. When he was jailed, I launched an immediate campaign for him. And now, suddenly, he finds himself Hong Kong’s most high-profile escapee.
My friend is Nathan Law.
The last time Nathan and I were together was at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham in October 2018, when Chinese State television reporter Kong Linlin screamed at us, and then assaulted a volunteer. That was my first experience of the Chinese Communist Party’s “wolf-warriors” – but I had no idea then how rapidly things would deteriorate.
As we finished lunch near Wimbledon Common, I suddenly recalled that the home of my own political hero – William Wilberforce – was nearby.
In 1780 Wilberforce was elected as a Member of Parliament aged 21 – two years younger than Nathan – and ended up leading what amounted to perhaps the first ever human rights campaign, against the slave trade.
It took him more than forty years, but year on year he introduced legislation to abolish slavery and, with the help of grassroots activists and a nationwide campaign, he chipped away at it until he succeeded. In one speech Wilberforce said words that stay as my motto: “We can no longer plead ignorance, we cannot evade it … we cannot turn aside”.
I hope it won’t take Nathan and his generation of activists as long to liberate Hong Kong. But there was a certain poignancy showing him the plaque on Wilberforce’s house which reads: “Statesman and Emancipator”. Perhaps that will be Nathan’s epitaph too.
In the meantime, just a couple of days after we met, Hong Kong rose up again. Quietly, carefully, with dignity – but powerfully.
If the imposition of the National Security Law on Hong Kong on July 1 was the death of “one country, two systems” – though never of Hong Kong, which lives on in the hearts of Hong Kongers – the pro-democracy primaries ten days later were a reminder that the spirit of Hong Kong is alive and well.
Despite the new security law, and in spite of sweeping police powers, Hong Kongers turned out in staggering numbers to choose the candidates for the pro-democracy camp to field. They reminded the world that even if they can no longer take to the streets or chant banned slogans, they can – and will – if given the chance – express their voice at the ballot box.
And yet even now, the Chinese Communist Party and its puppet Carrie Lam – who has proven beyond all doubt that she has no voice beyond the strings that are pulled by the ventriloquists in Beijing – threatens to punish those who held the primaries.
For one simple reason and one alone. They’re petrified of any democrat winning in the Legislative Council election in September. They have no intellectual or moral argument. They’re terrified of the ballot box. They know that, aside from their fists and their boots and their guns, they have no weapon.
And so they hurriedly sweep Hong Kong’s libraries of books they think people should not read. And they rapidly prepare to censor the internet. And they ban school children from singing, chanting slogans or boycotting classes. Even holding hands – regardless of COVID – is politically unacceptable.
To return to Kong Linlin, at Nathan, the others and me, hers was more than a rant. With hindsight, it was a pre-emptive strike at the very heart of a western democracy – at the annual conference of the governing party of my country. That ought to have been a wake-up call.
Even before then, British Members of Parliament had been lobbied by the Chinese embassy to silence me. I received intimidatory letters to my home address – as did my neighbours and my mother – and in the past year other activists have received the same. A concerted campaign to silence dissent well beyond its borders has been well underway for some time, as the forthcoming book Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World illustrates.
The threats to our freedoms are real. But even before it reaches that stage, there’s a far more imminent danger. If the world does not respond to the destruction of Hong Kong with as robust, co-ordinated, united and effective measures possible, Taiwan will be next.
So we must stand by Taiwan. In recent years I have applauded Taiwan as an exemplary vibrant democracy which by the very nature of its values ought to be regarded as an ally and a friend. In the Cold War, we were never in doubt about which part of the divided Germany we stood with. Today we’re not in doubt which side of the Korean peninsula we ally with. So why do we equivocate when it comes to the divided China – if indeed we still believe in “one China”? Is it not time at least to strengthen our links with Taiwan – and prepare to defend it, and even to recognise it?
Remember the Sudetenland. Remember Czechoslovakia. Remember Poland. Let’s learn the lessons of history. And let’s remember that the banning of books, the criminalisation of singing, the prohibition of boycotts, the potential Internet censorship and the sweeping police powers to raid any property without any warrant at any time is just the start. Don’t be surprised when we see the burning of books. To prevent that – we need the beating of hearts, the mobilisation of minds and the awakening of consciences: throughout the world.
For that reason, the second friend I met in person – and the only other person beside Nathan I’ve dined with so far – is also a Hong Konger. It was my friend who has been teaching me Chinese characters during lockdown. My friend Jasmine, whose song “Here’s to the Fools Who Dream”, helps keep hearts in Hong Kong beating.
That the first two people I have met in person since lockdown are Hong Kongers tells you something about what Hong Kong and its struggle for freedom means to me.
So let my friend Nathan – and his predecessor Wilberforce – awaken the conscience of the world. And let it not take forty years.
And let Jasmine’s song enflame our hearts.
And as they said in the first struggle for freedom with which I began in Hong Kong – East Timor’s – “A luta continua”: in other words, “the struggle goes on”.
Benedict Rogers is the Co-founder and Chair of Hong Kong Watch. The article was published in Apple Daily on 17 July 2020. (Photo: Studio Incendo)