‘Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times’, Benedict Rogers

We have a responsibility to speak out for the three brave Hong Kongers thrown in jail last week

Wearing a certain type of T-shirt or posting on social media can be a crime in Hong Kong now, as the sentencing of the first three people to be convicted under the city’s draconian new “Article 23” domestic security law shows.

Last week, the West Kowloon Magistrate’s Court sentenced Chu Kai-pong, aged 27, to 14 months in prison for wearing a T-shirt and a mask with the banned slogans from the 2019 protest movement, “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times” and “Five Demands, Not One Less,” which includes reference to the movement’s demands for democratic elections.

Chung Man-kit, aged 29, was jailed for 10 months for writing slogans in support of Hong Kong independence — and the “Free Hong Kong” protest slogan — on the back of bus seats earlier this year.

And Au Kin-wai received a 14-month prison term after being convicted of “knowingly publishing publications with seditious intent” — a reference to his posts on YouTube, Facebook and X calling on Chinese Communist Party dictator Xi Jinping and Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee to resign.

All three were charged under the new Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (SNSO), which was passed by Hong Kong’s puppet Legislative Council on March 19 and took effect on March 23 this year under Article 23 of the city’s Basic Law after being fast-tracked through a sham legislative process.

The new law is in addition to the already profoundly repressive National Security Law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing in 2020, but expands definitions, and adds new categories of crime and more severe penalties. It creates crimes of “treason,” “theft of state secrets” and “external interference.” It increases the maximum sentence for “sedition” from three years to seven years in jail — and ten years for “collusion with external forces.” Those accused under this new law can in some circumstances be denied access to a lawyer and be detained for up to 16 days without charge.

Since the introduction of the new Article 23 law, at least 14 people have been arrested, with the most recent arrests coming last month on charges of “seditious intentions.”

Within hours of its passage by the Hong Kong legislature, over 90 international parliamentarians and public figures issued a statement condemning it.

But no amount of worldwide condemnation has prevented the transformation of Hong Kong from one of Asia’s most open cities into one of its most repressive police states in a matter of just a few years.

That transformation began perhaps a decade ago, with police brutality in response to the 2014 pro-democracy Umbrella Movement, intensified with the brutal crackdown against the 2019 protests, and rapidly accelerated with the imposition of the National Security Law four years ago. The Article 23 law completes the transformation and strips Hong Kongers of almost all remaining rights and freedoms.

British Catholic parliamentarian Lord Alton of Liverpool, a patron of Hong Kong Watch, said in response to last week’s sentences: “Chief Executive John Lee said that Article 23 legislation was necessary to counter serious security threats and protect Hong Kong. Now we can see that, according to John Lee, Hong Kong must be protected from the serious threat posed by ‘seditious’ T-shirts. It is hard to imagine a more perfect demonstration of the paranoia and overreaction of the Lee administration than throwing an individual in jail for over a year for wearing the wrong clothes.”

Lord Alton is spot-on. This is a regime — in Beijing and among its quislings in Hong Kong — that projects confidence but that, like every bully throughout history, is riddled with profound insecurity. It is scared of a T-shirt, a song, or a social media post. It is scared of its shadows.

And that is why the only right response is to stand up to it. To call out its behavior. And to ensure there are consequences — in the form of targeted sanctions — for its broken promises and breaches of international treaties.

As a footnote, I should add that I am in daily violation of Hong Kong’s National Security Law and the SNSO — or Article 23 as it is colloquially known — even in London. And I plead proudly and profoundly guilty.

Every time I speak at a rally, protest, or gathering of Hong Kongers in London or other cities around the world, I typically greet the crowds with the words, in Cantonese, “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times.”

I often wear a black T-shirt with this slogan on it and have been photographed under flags with these words emblazoned on them. I frequently carry a yellow umbrella or wear a yellow tie, in solidarity with the Umbrella Movement.

Barely a week goes by when I don’t write articles that are less than complimentary about Xi Jinping, John Lee, or the Chinese Communist Party. And my X, Facebook and bookcases at home are a permanent crime scene.

Yet while I make light of it to some extent, the sinister point is that Hong Kong’s two draconian laws contain within them extraterritorial applications that impact us all. So if you are asking why the imprisonment of Chu Kai-pong,  Chung Man-kit and Au Kin-wai matters to you, it is because Beijing’s tentacles could be applied well beyond China’s borders.

We therefore have a responsibility to each other and to ourselves to speak out for the three brave Hong Kongers thrown in jail last week, who are the latest in a long line of courageous individuals to end up behind bars in that beautiful city.

And we must continue to speak out for all of Hong Kong’s political prisoners, especially the media entrepreneur, British citizen and devout Catholic Jimmy Lai, aged 76, who risks dying in jail.

For the people of Hong Kong, it is now extremely difficult and dangerous to speak, even though the city is filled with highly articulate, enterprising and intelligent people more than capable of speaking for themselves.

That is why I will continue to lend them my voice for as long as necessary, however inadequate it is, to ensure that even if they have been gagged or jailed, they will not be silenced.

I will wear the T-shirts, write the social media posts, sing the songs and chant the slogans that Hong Kongers in Hong Kong go to jail for doing so. And all of us who have freedom should do the same.

As I said in 2021 in London’s Trafalgar Square: “We can sing ‘Glory to Hong Kong.’ We can protest. We can speak out. We can march. And we can say with one voice, for the people of Hong Kong, Gwong Fuk Heung Gong, Si Doi Gak Ming [Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times], Ga Yau [Add oil].”

This article was published in UCA News on 25 September 2024.