'Lionel Messi shouldn’t have been in Hong Kong in the first place', Benedict Rogers

Football has turned messy in Hong Kong. Last Sunday, the beleaguered Hong Kong Chinese Communist party was hoping for a public relations boost after Inter Miami agreed to play a friendly in the city against the Hong Kong Team. Instead, the game was overshadowed by a furious row after Miami footballer Lionel Messi failed to come out on the pitch because of a groin injury. The Hong Kong government reacted with outrage, and fans booed the players and demanded refunds. Three days later Messi was well enough to play in Japan, adding insult to injury in the eyes of the CCP.

The outcry has now spread to mainland China, with state media there accusing Messi and his club of ‘political motives’ aimed at ‘embarrassing’ Hong Kong. The Chinese Football Association has cut ties with the Argentinian Football Association in retaliation, and has reportedly removed all content related to Messi from its website. The Argentinian team will no longer play two international games in China either.

It seems like the furious reaction has only drawn attention to the Chinese government’s paranoia and fragility. It is perfectly normal for footballers to miss a match due to injury, and reports appear to confirm that Messi’s was genuine. The fact that he apologised for not playing suggests that he missed the match because of his health and not politics.

Still, it’s debatable whether Inter Miami should have gone to Hong Kong in the first place, especially in the week when the Hong Kong government announced plans for Article 23, a new and even more repressive security law to add to the already very draconian National Security Law imposed by Beijing in 2020.

The consultation paper on Article 23 produced by the Hong Kong government – just a few days before the football match in the Hong Kong Stadium – sets out plans to further tighten the noose around basic freedoms in Hong Kong. It aims to clamp down on ‘artistic creations released through media like publications, music, films, arts and culture, and online games.’ Amnesty International says Article 23 marks ‘potentially the most dangerous moment for human rights in Hong Kong since the introduction of the National Security Law’, claiming it will ‘stifle creativity and market research, reduce the flow of information, and further damage international business in Hong Kong.’

Hong Kong is no longer the free and open city it once was. Over 285 people have been arrested and imprisoned under the National Security Law, simply for exercising their basic civil liberties. Hundreds more remain in jail for participating in pro-democracy protests in 2019. At least 47 former elected legislators and activists have been in prison for over three years, simply for having held a primary election to choose candidates for what should have been the 2020 Legislative Council elections. The entire pro-democracy camp has been expelled from the legislature and district councils have been turned into pro-Beijing rubber-stamping bodies. A ‘patriotism’ test has been imposed for officials, requiring them not only to pledge allegiance to China but also to the CCP. Over 68 civil society organisations have been forced to close, and almost all independent media has been shut down.

One of Hong Kong’s most successful entrepreneurs,76-year-old billionaire Jimmy Lai, a British citizen and the founder of the largest pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily in Hong Kong, has been in prison for over three years on multiple false charges. His newspaper was forced to close in 2021 when the police raided the newsroom and the authorities froze its bank accounts.

On top of this, the Hong Kong government is applying the National Security Law extraterritorially by issuing arrest warrants with £100,000 bounties for 13 exiled pro-democracy activists, six of whom live in the UK. Hong Kong’s security secretary Chris Tang has warned that the passports of these exiles could be cancelled, effectively rendering them stateless and stranded. I was also threatened with a prison sentence two years ago, due to my advocacy, which is conducted entirely outside Hong Kong.

Most importantly, the CCP is in flagrant breach of an international treaty, the Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which Beijing promised to uphold Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy for at least the first 50 years after the handover, until 2047. Less than halfway through that period, Beijing has ripped up the treaty and broken its promises.

All of this calls into question the judgement of David Beckham, who allowed his team to play in Hong Kong last Sunday. Even if Beckham doesn’t care about the plight of the people of Hong Kong, his failure to show solidarity with his fellow British citizens who have been threatened by the Hong Kong government is disappointing.

Beckham and Inter Miami should perhaps have asked themselves, given the dismantling of Hong Kong’s freedoms, whether now was the right time to risk giving the CCP a propaganda boost.

As it happens, thanks to Messi’s injury and the Hong Kong government’s clumsy reaction, that propaganda coup has turned into a public relations fiasco. But that’s no thanks to Beckham and Inter Miami. I hope the next time they are invited to play in a police state, they think twice before accepting the invitation.

This article was published in The Spectator on 14 February 2024.