The Telegraph: 'Hong Kong's thuggish new leader epitomises its descent into a police state', Benedict Rogers

All of us who love Hong Kong and value freedom must brace ourselves for Lee’s rule. If we thought Lam was bad, he will be even worse

Hong Kong’s new chief executive, John Lee, will be sworn in on July 1st, precisely 25 years after the handover. Lee embodies Hong Kong’s transformation from one of Asia’s freest, most open cities to one of its most repressive police states. Throughout his career, he has known nothing besides policing.

Lee joined the Hong Kong Police Force aged 19 and served as a policeman for 35 years. In 2012 he left frontline policing to become Under Secretary for Security in CY Leung’s administration, and five years later was promoted by Carrie Lam to Secretary for Security. Until he rose to Chief Secretary – Lam’s number two – last year, his sole experience of government was of locking up or beating up protesters, critics and political opponents. 

Unlike Lam, who rose through the civil service across several bureaus, Lee has no first-hand experience of any policy area besides security. No knowledge of economic policy, education, infrastructure, housing, planning, transport, business or social welfare. He only knows how to wield his truncheon, spray teargas and pepper-spray, fire rubber bullets and cover up police brutality with impunity. As the last governor of Hong Kong Lord Patten put it recently, Lee “would not know the rule of law if it hit him in the eye with a plastic baton rod”.

An enthusiastic supporter of Lam’s ill-fated extradition bill in 2019, which would have led to suspects wanted by Beijing being sent to mainland China for trial and jail, Lee then became a zealous enforcer of the draconian National Security Law, which Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in 2020. That law has resulted in the rapid and dramatic dismantling of Hong Kong’s freedoms. 

Even I, living in London, received threats from Lee’s police force two months ago, accused of endangering China’s national security due to the advocacy work of the London-based organisation I co-founded, Hong Kong Watch. I was formally warned I could face imprisonment in Hong Kong for violating the National Security Law. While there is little that can be done to enforce the threat in London, I will have to be careful where I travel, and avoid countries that have extradition agreements with Hong Kong. It is an example of the extraterritorial application of the repressive law, and an illustration of the lengths to which Beijing and its quislings in Hong Kong are prepared to go to try to silence dissent.

Lee has signalled his rule will intensify repression even further. He has said he will fast-track legislation to implement Article 23 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, aimed at prohibiting “treason, secession, sedition or subversion”, in an effort to plug any gaps not yet covered by the National Security Law. He has also talked about action to ban “fake news” – which for authoritarian regimes is a euphemism to mean any news the government dislikes.

Most chillingly, in 2019 Lee visited Xinjiang, where the Chinese regime is accused of genocide, and later told Hong Kong lawmakers they should take lessons from Beijing’s handling of the Uyghurs. 

Lee was handpicked by Beijing precisely because they wanted a hardline thug to do their dirty work and further tighten the screws on Hong Kong. While Beijing has always controlled the election for Hong Kong’s chief executive, all four of his predecessors at least went through the pretence of a contest. Lee, however, ran unopposed, and not surprisingly won 99 per cent of the votes of the 1,461-member pro-Beijing selection committee, representing 0.02 per cent of Hong Kong’s population. Pyongyang-style democracy has reached Hong Kong.

Three days after Lee’s selection, Hong Kong’s 90 year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen, a courageous critic of Beijing, along with internationally respected barrister Margaret Ng and popular singer Denise Ho, were arrested. Their crime? They had served as trustees of a foundation that provided legal aid to protesters facing prosecution. The timing was perhaps no coincidence. It is a sign of worse to come.

Last week 110 British Parliamentarians wrote to the Foreign Secretary calling for an audit of Hong Kong and Chinese officials’ assets in the United Kingdom, as a pathway to imposing sanctions. It is reported that Lee’s wife and children have British passports, and he may well have wealth hidden here. As he prepares to take office and plunge Hong Kong into a new, even darker chapter of repression, all the more reason for the Foreign Secretary to conduct such an audit. Meanwhile, all of us who love Hong Kong and value freedom must brace ourselves for Lee’s rule. If we thought Lam was bad, Lee will be even worse. 

This article was published on The Telegraph on 30 May 2022.