Apple Daily: ‘Free Hong Kong’s Political Prisoners’, Benedict Rogers
When I lived in Hong Kong for the first five years after the handover, I spoke often about political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in Asia – particularly those in mainland China, Myanmar, Indonesia, Pakistan and North Korea. For all my adult life I have campaigned for prisoners jailed for their political or religious beliefs. I visited a young man, Alexander Aan, in his remote prison in the mountains of West Sumatra, Indonesia, where he was jailed because he is an atheist. I met the Maldives’ democracy leader Mohamed Nasheed when he was under house arrest. I have many friends who have been political prisoners, including one – Shin Dong-hyuk – who was born in a North Korean prison camp. But I never imagined until recently that I would be campaigning for political prisoners in Hong Kong.
Yesterday, Hong Kong Watch launched a new campaign page on our website: “Free Political Prisoners”. As most of the city’s most prominent democrats are in exile, in jail, on trial or – at the time of writing – awaiting sentencing, the time has come to step up our efforts and draw the world’s attention to their plight. People I used to be in touch with every week are now in prison in Hong Kong. I have to speak out for my friends.
What is so striking about the imprisonment of democrats in Hong Kong today is that there is no rationale for it other than the pure vindictiveness of the brutal Chinese Communist Party regime. Former legislator Au Nok-hin has been jailed for nine weeks just for using a loudspeaker, while earlier this week Joshua Wong was given another four months for defying an anti-mask law in 2019 (even though today we’re all wearing masks to protect us against Covid-19). These are nonsensical charges and ludicrous penalties.
More seriously, some facing charges under the draconian National Security Law could face at least ten years, perhaps life, in jail – simply for talking with foreign politicians, activists and journalists. The length of sentence only represents the degree of injustice, but the imprisonment of anyone for even a day simply for peacefully expressing an opinion represents a grave travesty of justice. By the time this article is published we will be awaiting the sentencing of seven of Hong Kong’s most internationally renowned, widely respected, moderate, mainstream pro-democracy campaigners – simply for having participated in a peaceful protest in 2019. And we brace ourselves for worse to come.
Juxtaposed alongside all this is the impunity with which those in the Hong Kong government and police abuse the rights of Hong Kong citizens. The exoneration of the police officer who ripped off then legislator Ted Hui’s goggles – not once but twice – and fired pepper spray directly into his eyes, as he was appealing for peace, is truly an outrage. And the behavior of retired expatriate police officer Alan Crowther, who sent a threatening and abusive email to former British Consulate-General employee Simon Cheng, now a refugee in the UK, is appalling. As if Simon Cheng had not suffered enough after his 2019 ordeal in which he was arrested, abducted at the border, detained in Shenzhen and tortured, to then receive such abuse from a former police superintendent is unacceptable. Yet in Hong Kong today, it is people like Ted Hui and Simon Cheng (both now in exile) who would be jailed, while the real criminals in the police force roam the streets and online channels continuing to threaten and terrorize anyone who advocates basic freedoms.
Indeed, instead of bringing genuine threats to national security – police officers who terrorize people – to justice, Beijing’s Hong Kong puppets yesterday held a ludicrous “National Security Education Day”, in which teachers and young children were required to make national security “mosaic walls”. This is how far Xi Jinping has changed China, taking it from the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Great Wall of China to the Orwellian National Security Law site of Hong Kong’s mosaic walls of indoctrination. Kindergarten children will learn about deep sea security, polar security and “key national security areas”, and the wonders of the Chinese Communist Party, when they should be enjoying nursery rhymes, reading, writing and arithmetic. It’s horrendous how far and how fast Hong Kong has fallen to Beijing’s mendacious rule.
At the start of this week I wrote in Chinese characters these words: #FreeMartinLee, #FreeAndyLi, #FreeJimmyLai, #FreeJoshuaWong, #FreeAgnesChow, #FreeEdwardLeung, Free #HongKong. It is likely that I will be writing similar characters in coming months. And as I do, I know that I – and all our team in Hong Kong Watch and our friends in legislatures, governments and civil society around the world – are with you and will always be demanding the release of those of our Hong Kong brothers and sisters unjustly jailed. Having once campaigned in Hong Kong for those in jail elsewhere in Asia, today I campaign for Hong Kong’s political prisoners – and will do so every day until they’re free.
Benedict Rogers is co-founder and Chief Executive of Hong Kong Watch. This article was published in Apple Daily on 16 April 2021. (Photo: Apple Daily)