Yet Again UK: 'Hong Kong: Longing for Freedom', Benedict Rogers

When you think of freedom fighters and political prisoners, you don’t normally think of international financial centres. Until relatively recently, Hong Kong was both a global trading hub and a base for media, civil society and defenders of liberty. Within the past year, its promised autonomy and basic rights have been rapidly dismantled. The money remains – for now – but the promised freedoms have evaporated.

For the first five years after Hong Kong’s handover to China, from 1997-2002, I lived in the city and worked as a journalist. I began my life in journalism and as an activist in Hong Kong. And at that time, I was optimistic about the city’s future. Although there were some subtle warning signs of media censorship, overall I left in 2002 confident that the promised ‘one country, two systems’ was working and that my focus on Myanmar, North Korea, Indonesia and mainland China was more urgently needed.

It wasn’t until the Umbrella Movement in 2014 that I started to re-engage with Hong Kong’s politics. But when I saw the protests seven years ago, I realized something had fundamentally changed and the city in which I had begun my working life needed my help. At that point I re-engaged, writing about the situation, trying to conduct some advocacy and then, between 2015-2017, hosted key Hong Kong activists in London: Nathan Law, Joshua Wong and the city’s former Chief Secretary Anson Chan. Initially it was in an ad-hoc, individual, spare-time capacity, but then I realized there was a need for a more sustainable platform beyond my own efforts, and so I co-founded Hong Kong Watch in 2017. In October that year, two months before the launch of the organisation, I attempted to visit Hong Kong again and was denied entry on the orders of Beijing, an incident that drew international media, diplomatic  and political attention. That was just a snapshot of what was to come.

From 2014 onwards the warning signs of further repression were clear. Booksellers abducted, pro-democracy legislators disqualified, mainland Chinese law imposed at Hong Kong’s high-speed rail terminus and my own denial of entry, followed by the deportation of the Financial Times’ Asia News Editor Victor Mallett, the ejection of Human Rights Watch’s Executive Director Kenneth Roth and others all pointed to storm clouds on the horizon. But I am not sure any of us predicted how fast or how far Beijing’s absolute takeover of Hong Kong would occur.

The clear turning point was 2019, when Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam proposed to dismantle the firewall between Hong Kong’s legal system and the mainland’s by implementing an extradition system. That meant, potentially, any of Beijing’s critics in Hong Kong could be sent to China’s gulags.

Understandably, the world was outraged and an unusual coalition of businesses, democrats and diplomats united in protest. Chambers of Commerce, foreign ministers from around the world, and the people of Hong Kong spoke out against it, but Ms Lam was intransigent. Even marches of millions of Hong Kongers failed to move her.

Tragically, the movement turned violent: first by the police, and then by a small minority of demonstrators in response. The police brutality and the total lack of accountability put Hong Kong in a depressing spiral. No cop was brought to justice, and yet thousands of protesters have been jailed. 

But in July 2020, Hong Kong descended into even further darkness. The rapid imposition of the draconian National Security Law without any debate, discussion or transparency – by the Chinese regime’s puppet National People’s Congress – tore up Hong Kong’s promised freedoms under the Sino-British Joint Declaration and imposed the Chinese Communist Party’s direct rule on the city.

As if that were not enough, Beijing has continued to tighten the screws still further. Almost all of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy leaders are now in jail, on trial or in exile. The Legislative Council was stripped of its democrats last November and so is already stacked with Beijing’s stooges. On 6 January this year 53 pro-democracy activists were arrested and a few weeks ago 47 of them were charged under the National Security Law, simply for having organized a primary election last July to choose their candidates for the subsequently postponed elections to the legislature. They were subsequently denied bail and could face years – potentially life – in prison.

Now, the regime’s National Peoples Congress plans to change electoral rules to further stack Hong Kong’s legislative and executive branches with Chinese Communist Party stooges, ensuring their total control, an absolute absence of accountability or transparency and the total dismantling of China’s promises under an international treaty, the Sino-British Joint Declaration. It represents the complete dismantling of a previously free city, the destruction of the promised ‘one country, two systems’ and the absorption of Hong Kong into the Chinese regime’s totalitarian system.

In response, it is absolutely right that the United Kingdom has opened its doors to Hong Kongers who are eligible for British National Overseas (BNO) status to flee. Other countries – such as Canada and Australia – have offered similar opportunities, and we hope European countries, the United States and others will do the same.

So what can you – Yet Again supporters – do?

Yet Again’s primary focus is genocide and atrocity crimes and, as barbaric as the crackdown in Hong Kong is, it does not reach that level. But the repression is grave and the human rights violations are serious, so as a starting point I would urge readers to pay attention to the assault – physical and legislative – on Hong Kong. For it is an assault not only on one city but on freedom itself.

You can call on the British government and others to act.

Firstly, there’s an urgent need for direct, targeted sanctions against officials in the Beijing and Hong Kong governments, for their violations of human rights and breaches of international obligations.

Secondly, we need a United Nations mechanism to monitor, report on and hold the perpetrators accountable for human rights violations in Hong Kong and the rest of China – a UN Special Rapporteur, Special Envoy and/or other mechanisms.

Thirdly, while the UK’s BNO scheme is very generous and courageous, it excludes some of the most vulnerable young Hong Kong activists born after 1997 who don’t qualify for BNO. The UK should make provision and provide sanctuary for other Hong Kongers who aren’t eligible for BNO status but who need help.

You can help Hong Kong Watch and other advocacy groups campaign for these goals by joining in advocacy to your Members of Parliament.

You can join our efforts to oppose the European Union’s Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) with China.

And you can continue your support for the Genocide Amendment to the Trade Bill which, while less directly related to Hong Kong, we in Hong Kong Watch support because it’s right, we are in solidarity with Uyghurs and increasingly our advocacy efforts need to combine to target the regime in Beijing.

But even more importantly – you can join the effort to welcome Hong Kongers coming to the UK, to ensure they receive the support and assistance they need to integrate into your neighbourhoods. You can join the efforts of the newly formed Welcoming Committee aimed at coordinating civil society efforts, or you can help any of the organisations involved in welcoming Hong Kongers.

It is vital that the free world does not allow the destruction of Hong Kong’s liberties to occur with impunity. If that happens, the signal sent will be that tyrants can rampage over the free world and tear up international agreements with abandon, and that would be a disastrous message to send. We all know where appeasement leads to – and Yet Again knows that better than most. So let’s stand up for Hong Kong and Hong Kongers – for as long as it takes and for the cause of freedom itself.

Benedict Rogers is co-founder and Chief Executive of Hong Kong Watch. This article was published on yetagainuk.com on 19 March 2021.