'Let's keep singing "Glory to Hong Kong"', Benedict Rogers

Today, the 27th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong is a day of mourning, but also a day of remembrance — and action

Twenty-seven years ago today, Hong Kong was handed over to China.

In preparation for the handover, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime in Beijing signed an international treaty with the United Kingdom, registered at the United Nations, in which it promised that Hong Kong would uphold its way of life, basic freedoms, the rule of law and a high degree of autonomy, for at least the first 50 years.

Under the Sino-British Joint Declaration, Hong Kong would be governed by the “one country, two systems” principle, with the Basic Law — the city’s mini-constitution — guaranteeing the rights and freedoms that Hong Kong enjoyed.

Today, that treaty lies in tatters, Beijing’s promises completely broken, Hong Kong’s rule of law increasingly undermined and its freedoms and autonomy dismantled.

As the last British Governor of Hong Kong Lord Patten of Barnes puts it in a video message to mark this anniversary today, the CCP — which has “trashed” the treaty — has “made it clear that no one can trust them further than you can spit.”

I lived in Hong Kong for the first five years after the handover, moving to the city in September 1997 just two months after Chris Patten and the British colonial government departed.

In those first five years, at least on the surface, Beijing appeared to abide by its promises. Working as a journalist in Hong Kong during those early years, I could write and publish articles in Hong Kong newspapers that today would never be published and would likely lead to my arrest for writing them if I still lived in the city.

Pro-democracy parties and candidates could still contest and win seats in the Legislative Council and the District Council. Protests could still take place. People could still express their opinions.

Beijing began to show signs of subtly eroding some of Hong Kong’s freedoms over subsequent years, but opposition to such moves from the Hong Kong public was still permitted — and was strongly expressed.

An attempt by the Hong Kong government to introduce a new security law in 2003 — the year after I left — provoked mass protests and in the end the government was forced to back down. A student movement was born in 2011 in protest at the proposed national education curriculum. And then in 2014, the “Occupy” protests calling for universal suffrage and direct elections for the city’s Chief Executive grew into what is now known as the “Umbrella Movement,” and marked a key turning point in the city’s fortunes.

Under the Basic Law, Hong Kong is promised universal suffrage. But the regime in Beijing was lying when it made that promise. The Umbrella Movement was inspiring in its reasonableness, and impressive in its peacefulness, and yet the response of the Hong Kong police was to deploy teargas, batons and handcuffs to arrest the protest leaders and shut down the demonstrations. There was no meaningful negotiation, no attempt to seek a genuine compromise, and no willingness to hear the people's voice or honor the promises of a treaty and a mini-constitution.

From 2014, it has been downhill all the way for Hong Kong. Initially, the repression was targeted — the imprisonment of key protest leaders, the disqualification of a handful of pro-democracy activists elected to the legislature, the disappearance of the Causeway Bay booksellers, and the introduction of mainland Chinese law at the high-speed rail terminus. But from 2019, the crackdown has intensified with a speed, severity, and all-consuming comprehensiveness that few would have predicted.

In 2019 the Hong Kong government proposed a new law to allow for the extradition of people from Hong Kong into mainland China, shattering the firewall that separated the two legal systems and undermining the city’s autonomy. That sparked fresh mass protests, which resulted in wholly disproportionate and barbaric police brutality.

For the first few months, the demonstrations were entirely peaceful and yet were met by the police with rubber bullets, teargas and beatings. The intransigence of the government and the inhumanity of the police resulted in a small minority of protesters resorting to more extreme actions, provoking a cycle of ever-increasing police violence.

Eventually, a combination of severe repression, exhaustion and the unleashing of the Covid-19 pandemic brought an end to the protests, but just the beginning of the repression.

This day does not only mark the 27th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong. It also marks the fourth anniversary of the final measures in the transformation of Hong Kong from one of Asia’s most open societies into one of its most repressive police states. That was the imposition by Beijing of an extremely draconian National Security Law, which has led to the almost-complete closure of independent media, civil society and pro-democracy activity.

Freedom of assembly, association, expression and protest no longer exist in Hong Kong; freedom of religion or belief is increasingly threatened, as Hong Kong Watch’s report late last year and the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation’s report earlier this year outline; academic freedom is undermined; the rule of law is being eroded; and pro-democracy legislators have been expelled from the legislature, jailed or exiled and prohibited from contesting future elections.

Indeed, so-called ‘elections’ for any level of public office in Hong Kong are now a Pyongyang-style sham — to run for either the District Council or Legislative Council, you have to prove loyalty to the CCP, and the current Chief Executive John Lee was selected unopposed.

Hong Kong’s legislature — which used to be a vibrant debating chamber — is now simply a rubber stamp, a mere puppet subsidiary of Beijing’s National People’s Congress, and Lee, as a former serving police officer whose only experience of government has been in the Security Bureau, symbolizes the police state.

As Lord Patten said, Hong Kong is now run by “a tin-pot group of former police officers … who bring discredit on what was once a very fine police service.” Lee and his colleagues, Lord Patten adds, “wouldn’t know the difference between a human right and a truncheon.”

So today — the 27th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong and the fourth anniversary of the imposition of the repressive national security law — is a day of mourning. But it is also a day of remembrance — and action.

It is a day when we must remember — as we should every day — all of Hong Kong’s hundreds of political prisoners.

In particular, we should remember — and pray for — Jimmy Lai, a devout Catholic and British citizen, a remarkable 76-year-old entrepreneur and pro-democracy publisher who founded the Apple Daily newspaper which so courageously shone light and truth against the CCP’s darkness until it was forcibly shut down in 2021.

We should also remember the brave barrister Chow Hang-Tung, who is in prison for helping to organize peaceful candle-lit vigils in Hong Kong to remember the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

And we should remember the 47 former legislators and activists, in jail for holding a primary election to choose the pro-democracy camp’s candidates for what was to have been the 2020 Legislative Council elections. Those elections were postponed with the excuse of the Covid-19 pandemic, and those pro-democracy politicians and campaigners were arrested and jailed on Jan. 6, 2021. Their trial will conclude soon — and the international community should watch the verdict closely and speak out strongly to demand their release.

There are three other clear steps the international community can take to help Hong Kongers.

First, the free world should further expand lifeboat schemes to help those who need to leave the city to find sanctuary elsewhere.

The United Kingdom has led the way in this with the introduction of its British National Overseas (BNO) visa scheme, which to its credit the British government announced on this day four years ago in response to the imposition of the National Security Law.

The scheme was expanded in 2022 to help young people born after 1997, but there are some born before 1997 who, despite having a parent with BNO status, are not currently eligible. They need assistance and it is time for the UK government to close that loophole.

Canada has also played a leading role in providing a route for Hong Kongers. Its pathway is welcome, but it could do more, especially to ensure that political prisoners, once released, find sanctuary in Canada.

Australia has also played its part but could consider what more it could do, as could the United States and the European Union. Perhaps democracies in the region — Japan, Korea and Taiwan in particular — could do more to open up opportunities for Hong Kongers who want to build a new life in freedom outside the police state that their city has become.

Secondly, the international community must not allow the trashing of an international treaty to go unchallenged. To permit the regime in Beijing and its quislings in Hong Kong to continue the crackdown on Hong Kong with impunity and without accountability or consequences will only embolden the tyrants.

And if the tyrants are emboldened, and sense weakness from the free world, we know what their next target is. Taiwan. We must prevent further aggression against Taiwan — and a potentially catastrophic regional and global war — by punishing the repression in Hong Kong with coordinated, tough, targeted sanctions.

And lastly, we must learn a lesson. That Beijing’s dictators do not keep their promises. They can never be trusted again.

Hong Kong’s freedoms have been “squashed,” says Lord Patten. “You can’t even make a sign in the air indicating that you remember Tiananmen Square — and you certainly can’t sing any song about how wonderful Hong Kong has been as a free society. ‘Glory to thee Hong Kong’ — you get locked up for doing that.”

In today’s Hong Kong, you could be arrested for liking a social media post or wearing a T-shirt of a particular color. So those of us who love Hong Kong and cherish freedom and live outside Hong Kong must do those things on behalf of the people of Hong Kong. We must protest, we must speak out, we must wear the T-shirts and we must sing, loudly, clearly and at every possible opportunity, “Glory to Hong Kong."

This article is published in UCA News on 1 July 2024.