'Hong Kong’s digital rights are in serious peril', Benedict Rogers

A new report by Hong Kong Watch claims the Chinese Communist Party regime is now invading the digital space

Over the past five years, Hong Kong’s freedoms have been dismantled one by one.

The freedom to protest peacefully was smashed by police brutality in 2019. Democratic participation was ripped to shreds with the effective expulsion of the entire pro-democracy camp of elected legislators from Hong Kong’s Legislative Council in 2020 and the arrest of 47 pro-democracy legislators and campaigners on Jan. 6, 2021.

Freedom of the press was torn apart with the forced closure of Apple Daily, Stand News, and other independent media outlets in 2021 and of course with the arrests of the Apple Daily’s founder and proprietor Jimmy Lai in December 2020 and the Stand News editors a year later.

Today, in Hong Kong, there is almost no freedom at all offline.

As a new report by Hong Kong Watch launched in London, Brussels, and Ottawa last week and in Washington, DC on Nov. 13 claims, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime is now invading the digital space to repress digital rights in Hong Kong and around the world.

Having destroyed almost all of Hong Kong’s basic freedoms in the physical space, the authorities are increasingly turning their attention – and surveillance – online.

The report – titled Invisible Decline: Violations of Digital Rights in Hong Kong and their Impact – details the climate of fear created by the CCP’s escalation of digital surveillance and repression and in particular how this relates to increasing transnational repression.

To put it very simply, Hong Kongers are now, understandably, ultra-cautious about their online behavior. While the ‘Great Firewall of China’ has not yet been applied in Hong Kong in its entirety, it has been introduced piecemeal.

Targeted websites—including that of the organization I co-founded, Hong Kong Watch—are blocked. Sensitive material, such as the anthem of the pro-democracy movement, ‘Glory to Hong Kong,’ is unavailable. Individual comments, likes, and shares on social media are monitored. Any post, like, or share that is politically sensitive is also politically dangerous.

But the CCP’s reach extends beyond Hong Kong’s borders. Hong Kongers in the diaspora in exile, who left Hong Kong for the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, or other countries hoping to find freedom, may also have to be cautious – especially if they have family back home.

Even if they don’t have relatives in Hong Kong, there is understandable concern about potential surveillance, harassment, and repercussions in their new homeland due to the presence of CCP spies and the risk of infiltration of their community. This threat affects people offline – but it creates particular tensions online.

For understandable reasons, people disguise their identity, decline photographs, and refrain from commenting or sharing posts.

At the launch of the report in the UK Parliament in London, I described the relentless threats I have endured not only of trolls on Twitter, now known as ‘X,’ which have become a daily fact of life, but also of dozens of anonymous threatening letters and official threats from the Hong Kong police of a prison sentence for being in breach of the draconian National Security Law – which claims extra-territorial application.

I also described the multitude of fake emails impersonating me – and various other types of cyber-attacks, which, for security reasons, I cannot describe in detail. And if they’re doing this to me, you can imagine how much worse it is for Hong Kongers.

The CCP is at war with anyone who believes in freedom, democracy and human rights, offline and very much online.

That online war is perhaps best illustrated by the determined effort by Beijing to persuade Spotify to remove “Glory to Hong Kong” – something for which Spotify, at least outside Hong Kong, should be put under pressure and held to account to explain.

Then there is the case of HKLEAKS, a wave of social media channels created during the 2019 protests that doxed the personal information of prominent Hong Kong activists – a blatant effort to intimidate and threaten.

Then, there is the threat of ordinary Hong Kongers returning to their home city from abroad. In March 2023, Mika Yuen Ching-ting was arrested when she returned home to Hong Kong after studying in Japan. She was arrested upon her return, for simple social media posts on Facebook and Instagram that appeared to defend the pro-democracy movement.

The crackdown on Hong Kong’s freedom is all-encompassing, and as such no corner should be ignored. While human rights groups and sympathetic governments and policy-makers may – understandably and to some extent rightly – be thinking of the elected legislators, the journalists, the lawyers and human rights defenders in jail in Hong Kong today, and the shuttering of off-line civil society space, they should not ignore the repression in the digital space.

For these reasons, there are some key things the world can do.

All jurisdictions should ensure that technology companies comply with international human rights standards and do not sell personal data for short-term gain.

We must do more to support media, civil society and academia in this space.

We should impose targeted sanctions on the Hong Kong government, and individual officials within it responsible for this crackdown, and ensure social media companies introduce appropriate safeguards – without ever silencing freedom and diversity of opinion.

This important report is worth considering, and a discussion is needed: How can we better protect our rights to security and freedom of expression, online and offline?

We must tackle surveillance, prevent infiltration, counter distortion and misinformation, and protect against harassment and threats.

We must defend genuine freedom – for Hong Kongers and everyone.

This article was published on 12 November 2024 in UCA News.