01 Jul 22 | China, Hong Kong, News and features
Mark Clifford, Kris Cheng and Benedict Rogers speak in parliament ahead of the 25th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong
“The fear of possibly being attacked by the far-reaching Chinese Communist Party is always there.” These were the words of political activist Nathan Law. His background in peaceful activism and outspoken pro-democratic views have made him a target of the Chinese Communist Party.
Law, who is best known as one of the student leaders of the Umbrella Movement and who was the youngest legislator in Hong Kong history, fled Hong Kong in 2020, a few days before the implementation of the National Security Law (NSL). In the same year, Law was listed as one of the 100 most influential individuals in the world by Time Magazine.
Law was speaking at an event organised by Index on Censorship and The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong inside parliament, the heart of British politics. The purpose? To highlight the actions of the Chinese government and showcase the fearmongering tactics used to manipulate and intimidate all Hong Kongers, both domestic residents and those abroad, ahead of the 25th anniversary handover of Hong Kong from British rule to Beijing rule.
The event was chaired by Index on Censorship’s Jemimah Steinfeld and hosted by Neil Coyle, a Member of Parliament. Other panellists included Mark Clifford, former editor-in-chief for both The Standard and The South China Morning Post as well as president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, Evan Fowler, a writer and researcher from Hong Kong, Benedict Rogers, the CEO of Hong Kong Watch, and Kris Cheng, a journalist who used to work at Hong Kong Free Press.
Coyle kicked it off by setting the tone of the evening’s conversation: “What we [are] discussing and hearing today in this building would guarantee the panellists’ arrests and imprisonments were they to say the same in Hong Kong today.”
The implementation of the NSL has placed a stranglehold on dissent. While the punishment for violating the law is clear — up to life in prison for some “offences”— how the Chinese government interprets and manipulates the law falls into a grey zone, leaving many Hong Kong residents in a perpetual state of fear.
The NSL was a turning point, though Clifford said that “Hong Kong was always living on borrowed time”. But he spoke of how pre-handover it wasn’t always obvious the direction China would take, as the last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, had created a much more pluralistic society. Speaking of this period, Clifford said that “the Chinese rightly understood that once Hong Kong people tasted freedom and democracy, it was going to be hard to put the genie back in the bottle.”
Rogers also spoke of a time where there was still hope. “For the five years that I lived and worked in Hong Kong, those first five years after the handover, that sense of foreboding when I got there appeared to have largely receded. There was a sense that One country, Two systems, by and large, was working pretty well. Hong Kong felt pretty free.”
By the time Rogers left in 2002, however, he started to see the subtle warning signs turn increasingly more substantial. “I saw some worrying signs that made me decide after five years it was time for me to move on.”
Fowler recalled the days surrounding the Handover. “It’s now being celebrated as this great event where Hong Kong was returned to the Motherland, where all the comrades happily embraced returning to the Communist fold. I really didn’t feel that at all. The feeling that I remember was that people didn’t know what was going to happen. Taking what [Clifford] said earlier about the old colonial saying ‘borrowed place on borrowed time,’ there really was a sense of that.”
Fowler went on to share an analysis of two different eras in history. “I suppose the big transition was before 1997. No matter how things were going in Hong Kong, there was always this feeling that you didn’t know what future lay in store, and ultimately you knew that that future wasn’t to be decided by you.”
Post-1997, Fowler said the general consensus was that people believed most issues had been resolved, but that it certainly wasn’t a wonderful celebration every time. Today though the CCP is trying hard to erase any memories of protest and misgivings from the time, as we recently reported here.
Chinese propaganda is something panellist Cheng was accustomed to throughout his childhood in Hong Kong. At school, Cheng went on a “national education tour” in Beijing. Cheng said the tour was a way to influence the minds of younger generations. “The whole thing is to let you have the experience in the Chinese government and capital, to know what was going on in China, to build that identity. I called it ‘softcore propaganda.’”
Cheng used this experience as motivation for his career as editorial director at Hong Kong Free Press. It also made Cheng realise the dissimilarities between Hong Kong and China. “I don’t think, at the time, that there was some sort of Hong Kong identity in the Hong Kong people, but it actually made me feel like ‘Wait, we [Hong Kongers] are a bit different.’”
Themes of oppression and manipulation were hit on heavily throughout the event. Law argued that the “fight of Hong Kong is not only for Hong Kong people”. He believes that the democratic nations of the world must “stand at the forefront of the global resistance and pushback against the rise of authoritarianism. At the end of the day, if we cannot contain the aggression of the Chinese Communist Party, there will be no ability to make a change in Hong Kong.”
“If the case of Hong Kong can remind us how fragile freedoms and democracy are and how underprepared we have been for the past few decades, then it can remind everyone we need resources and [need] to form global alliances to heckle these dictators’ aggression,” said Law.
He urged individuals on the panel and those within the room to “not let the government forget the atrocities committed against protesters and pro-democracy movements, at least until we have gathered enough mechanisms to hold these human rights perpetrators accountable.”
You can listen to a recording of our Hong Kong event here.
22 Jun 22 | Afghanistan, Africa, Americas, Asia and Pacific, Belarus, China, Europe and Central Asia, European Union, Hungary, India, Kenya, Magazine, Magazine Contents, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Volume 51.02 Summer 2022 Extras
The summer issue of Index magazine concentrated its efforts on the developing situation between Russia and Ukraine and consequential effects around Europe and the world.
We decided to give voice to journalists, artists and dissidents who chose to respond to this ruthless war. At the same time, we didn’t forget other attacks on freedoms that haven’t been covered around the globe as much as they should.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Up front”][vc_column_text]Joining Ukraine’s battle for freedom, by Jemimah Steinfeld: We must stand with the bold and brave against Putin.
The Index: A global tour of free expression, departing from the poll booth and arriving at the journalists reporting under Taliban rule.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Features”][vc_column_text]Fifty years of pride and prejudice, by Peter Tatchell: Following the rise and
corporate fall of London’s march for LGBT rights, will grassroots voices rise again?
India’s meaty issue, by Aishwarya Jagani: When a burger comes with a side of oppression.
Cartoon, by Ben Jennings: Art imitates life, caveman style.
My three years of hell in an Uyghur ‘re-education’ camp, by Gulbahar Hatiwaj and Rahima Mahmut: As the world stays silent, hear the truth from inside China’s brutal concentration camps.
One step ahead of the game, by Chen Dan: Media criticism of the Chinese government is all part of the power play.
Welcome to the kingdom of impunity, by Michael Deibert: The landscape is dangerous for journalists in Haiti. Murders and kidnappings are a daily risk.
Politically corrected? By Issa Sikiti da Silva: The banned words the Kenyan
government doesn’t want to hear in this election year.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Special report: The battle for Ukraine”][vc_column_text]Losing battle for truth in Russian lecture halls, by Ilya Matveev: The war has put a new strain on academic freedom. A Russian lecturer laments his lost classroom.
Don’t be afraid to say two plus two is four, by Mark Frary and Alla Gutnikova: As a convicted student journalist speaks out for freedom, do Russian dissidents once again face the gulag?
Emotional baggage, by Slavenka Drakulic: How it feels to pack up a life in Ukraine and become a refugee.
Back to the future, by Martin Bright: The world has been turned
upside down for Ukrainian reporters, and this is their new landscape.
On not being shot, by John Sweeney: Amidst the Kremlin-wrought
wreckage, do we need a new era of journalism?
Russia’s trojan horse moves closer to Europe, by Viktória Serdult: In Hungary, Putin’s right-hand man and Europe’s right-wing firebrand wins again.
Turkey’s newfound russophilia, by Kaya Genç: Putinism is seeping into Turkey, and it spells trouble for future freedoms.
Divided by age and a tv screen, by Hanna Komar: How do you make sure your
family see the truth when they’re blinded by Kremlin propaganda? A Belarus activist speaks out.
Culture in the cross hairs, by Andrey Kurkov: Decades after Soviet rule, Ukrainian culture is once again under threat, as are the lives behind the creative expression.
Bordering on media control, by Kseniya Tarasevich: False information about
Ukraine finds fertile breeding ground in Poland.
Treat tragedies of the Ukraine war with dignity, by Olesya Khromeychuk: The grieving hearts left behind when death becomes news fodder.
Worth a gamble, by Jemimah Steinfeld: When telling the truth is a crime, turn to a criminal spam operation.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Comment”][vc_column_text]
Cancel Putin, not culture, by Maria Sorenson: Banning Russian artists assumes
that they are all collaborators of the Russian state and goes against artistic freedoms.
Beware the ‘civilisation’ battle, by Emily Couch: Why Europe must reject
anti-Asian racism to fully stand with Ukraine.
The silent minority, by Ruth Smeeth: A tribute to those whose work never saw the light of day.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Culture”][vc_column_text]‘The light is no longer the light it used to be’, by Lyuba Yakimchuk: The poet on children being indoctrinated and the elderly disorientated in Russia-occupied Ukraine.
A cassandra worth heeding, by Dominic Cavendish: Murdered Russian journalist
Anna Politkovskaya, whose dispatches from Chechnya should be put in the spotlight.
Poetic injustice, by Stephen Komarnyckyj: History is repeating itself
on the pages penned by Ukrainian writers.
Banking on Russia’s poetic spirit, by Maria Bloshteyn and Yulia Fridman: A “piggy bank” of Russian poetry is fighting on the right side of Putin’s war.
Metaphors and madness, by Eduardo Halfon: In Guatemala, truth is best expressed through fiction.
Metal shows its mettle, by Guilherme Osinski: A heavy metal band labelled
“satanic” by Iran is free from prison and taking back the microphone.
America’s coming crucible, by Jo-Ann Mort: Women in the USA might soon be in the dark about their own bodies.
22 Jun 22 | Magazine, Magazine Editions, Volume 51.02 Summer 2022
In the summer 2022 issue of Index on Censorship, people across the spectrum talk about the corrosive effect of the war in Ukraine on freedoms. Viktoria Sedult, a journalist in Hungary, writes about how Europe’s most right-wing leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, used fears of being embroiled in the war to secure a resounding electoral victory. Hanna Komar, an activist from Belarus, tells how she is desperately trying to challenge her parents on the lies they see on their TV. We give space to Ukrainian writers and artists, with a moving essay from Andrey Kurkov on how today, as in the past, Russia is trying to erase Ukraine’s culture, and a discussion with the poet Lyuba Yumichuk on children in Donbas being fed an alternative history. We publish the court statement from student journalist Alla Gutnikova, one of the Doxa Four sentenced to two years’ “correctional labour” in April, alongside an interview with her. Ilya Matveev, a Russian academic, writes about the incredibly difficult environment in his St Petersburg classroom, which eventually led him to flee. And we spotlight the amazing ways people are fighting back.
Author
Andrey Kurkov is an Ukrainian author who has written about 20 documentary, fiction and TV movie scripts and also 19 novels, including the bestseller Death and the Penguin. Read More
Author
Human rights campaigner
Peter Tatchell is the director of human rights organisation the Peter Tatchell Foundation and highly acknowledged for his work with the LGBT movement.
Human rights campaigner
Artist and Activist
Rahima Mahmut is the director of the World Uyghur Congress (UK) and Adviser to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China.
Artist and Activist
by Index on Censorship | 22 Jun 22 | Afghanistan, Africa, Americas, Asia and Pacific, Belarus, China, Europe and Central Asia, European Union, Hungary, India, Kenya, Magazine, Magazine Contents, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Volume 51.02 Summer 2022 Extras | 0 Comments
The summer issue of Index magazine concentrated its efforts on the developing situation between Russia and Ukraine and consequential effects around Europe and the world. We decided to give voice to journalists, artists and dissidents who chose to respond to this...
21 Jun 22 | Asia and Pacific, China, Hong Kong, News and features
Since the handover of Hong Kong to Beijing on 1 July 1997, the annual march to mark the date became a rallying point for Hong Kong's pro-democracy activitists. Photo: Etan Liam/Flickr
Residents of Hong Kong are going to be given “fortune bags” this month. Millions of people in the city of 7.4 million will receive bags containing a mug, a pen and a fan. The souvenirs will be customised to celebrate 25 years since the handover of Hong Kong from British rule to Beijing rule, which took place on 1 July 1997. This is just one of many planned initiatives to mark the date. Others include the opening of the Hong Kong Palace Museum, modelled on a museum of the same name in Beijing. There’ll be exhibitions, a gala, performances – you name it, they’re doing it. On a less grand scale, an exhibition of photographs from 1997 has been on display at a local Hong Kong art gallery this spring, a collage of smiling faces and waving China flags. A book accompanies the exhibition.
All the initiatives serve to hammer home the message – “this day is a celebration. Do not say otherwise.” The Chinese government is effectively stage managing the 1 July anniversary.
It’s hardly unusual for a state to want to preside over a message of overwhelming positivity. In the UK, we’ve all just emerged from the extravaganza that was the Queen’s Jubilee, a jamboree that sidestepped any of the scandals surrounding the Queen and Royal Family, as well as some people’s misgivings about the concept of monarchy.
But Beijing is going one step further. Not only are they ramping up good stories, they’re papering over the bad. Inconvenient truths are being written out. New Hong Kong textbooks, for example, will say that the city was never a British colony. Instead, the books will teach students the British "only exercised colonial rule" in Hong Kong. Even the police are being made to change their march. According to the South China Morning Post, the Hong Kong Police Force and other disciplined services are being ordered to move in the Chinese “goose-step” fashion at all important events from 1 July, over the current British-style.
Such distinctions might seem curious, even pedantic – “colony” versus “colonial rule”, what difference you might ask? – but they’re in fact highly political. Beijing is suggesting an unbroken line of sovereignty with Hong Kong. Such a narrative criss-crosses with the one it has used in Xinjiang and Tibet, both of which have been denied past independence in order to justify current Chinese control. As George Orwell famously wrote “who controls the past controls the future”. That is China’s aim.
In Hong Kong, Beijing has been building up to this moment for decades, laying the foundations even before the handover took place. Jonathan Mirsky, East Asia editor of The Times in the 1990s, described the situation in Index six months before the handover: news channels reporting on China were doing so in a “vapid or grovelling” manner; organisations were expected to plan celebrations for the handover. He predicted a dire future, and he was right. Freedom of speech and assembly – the core freedoms that underpin democracies – have been whittled away to the point of non-existence. Index has reported on Hong Kong on and off since our creation in 1972. In recent years this reporting has been more “on”.
The passage of the National Security Law in 2020 entrenched the worst excesses of rule by Beijing. It effectively made criticism of government illegal. Protests surrounding the handover that have taken place annually since 1997 have now become too high-stakes.
But we don’t have to play by Beijing rules over here. We can point out that Hong Kong was, in fact, a British colony. That’s not something to be proud of, but it is well established. The rewriting of history is happening with alarming regularity in China (and elsewhere for that matter) and we should call out this worrying trend.
We should also talk about what has happened to freedoms in Hong Kong since 1997. Events like an anniversary are excellent moments to spotlight a cause and concentrate conversations.
Let’s use the 25th year to really raise our voice. In so doing let’s forge connections with those actively campaigning for Hong Kong freedoms, people like Nathan Law and Benedict Rogers and organisations like Hong Kong Watch and the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong. We have more power when united. Let’s continue to speak up for those who can’t right now because they’ve been silenced – Jimmy Lai, Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and the many more currently in prison in Hong Kong simply for demanding basic rights. And let’s pressurise our own governments to do the same.
Ultimately people in Hong Kong should be able to commemorate 1 July however they want, be it with great fanfare and fireworks or holding up a poster and shouting out against Chinese government repression. A pluralistic society is one to celebrate, not one that’s afraid of its own history.
