The Telegraph: 'Beijing is stepping up its war on freedom', Benedict Rogers

If I were extradited to face charges, would I be tried by one of the British judges who continue to sit in Hong Kong's courts?

I am on the Chinese Communist Party’s hitlist. I have been for the past five years, but now the situation has escalated. I have received a letter from the Hong Kong Police, followed by an email from the Hong Kong government’s National Security Bureau, demanding that I take down the website of the organisation I co-founded, Hong Kong Watch, within 72 hours, or face a fine of up to £10,000 and anything between one year and life imprisonment under Beijing’s draconian national security law.

The world is rightly focused on the horrors Vladimir Putin is inflicting on Ukraine. But let us not be naive in thinking that he is the only threat to the free world. His friends in Beijing pose just as much a danger and are just as determined to silence dissent, even beyond their borders, and undermine our freedoms at home.

I co-founded Hong Kong Watch in 2017 because I could see the early warning signs of the erosion of Hong Kong’s liberties and autonomy. Shortly before launching the organisation, I was denied entry to Hong Kong, on the orders of Beijing. Although others have had similar experiences, I was probably the first “Westerner” to be so publicly targeted. It provoked, at the time, a diplomatic incident, several parliamentary debates and a minor media frenzy.

Now our website is blocked in Hong Kong and I am, in a sense, not just a deportee but also a fugitive. There is no way in which we would comply with Beijing’s demand that we remove our website, and so I am prepared to be charged. Of course there is little they could do to enforce the charges, and I cannot travel to Hong Kong anyway, but I will have to be more mindful of my security from now on.

Over the past five years, I have received numerous threatening letters and emails. My neighbours, my previous employers, several Parliamentarians and even my 80-year-old mother have received letters urging them to shut me up.

On a recent visit to Canada, I received an email indicating knowledge of my hotel booking in Vancouver. “See you at the Sheraton,” it read.

But now, the Chinese Communist Party regime and its quislings in Hong Kong have taken things to a whole new level. Its long arm is stretching too far. Last year it sanctioned British Parliamentarians; now it threatens a British citizen with criminal prosecution. Under the extraterritoriality clause of Hong Kong’s national security law, I could be charged with so-called “crimes” I have committed from London, including “collusion” with foreign entities to “endanger national security.”

How should we respond? To her credit, the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss issued a swift and robust statement condemning the Hong Kong authorities’ actions. But the time has come to ask whether, now that a British citizen has been threatened in this way, British judges should continue to sit in Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal, providing a veneer of credibility to a judicial system now heavily compromised by Beijing? If I were extradited to Hong Kong to face charges, would I be tried by one of the British judges who still think their presence in Hong Kong’s courts is defensible?

This is a stark reminder that in the world we live in today, the fight between freedom and autocracy is not limited to the battlefields of Ukraine. To paraphrase Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn, it passes through every human heart, invades our cyberspace and is on our very doorstep. If we cherish the freedoms we take for granted, we must be prepared to defend them – at all costs.

This article was published on The Telegraph on 14 March 2022.

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