15 Nov 21 | China, Hong Kong, News and features
A former food delivery worker calling himself a “second-generation Captain America” and who would turn up at protests in Hong Kong with the Marvel superhero’s instantly recognisable shield has been convicted for violating the country’s national security law (NSL).
On 11 November, Adam Ma Chun-man was sentenced to five years and nine months for inciting secession by chanting pro-independence slogans in public places between August and November 2020.
Evidence cited by a government prosecutor in the court case against Ma included calls for independence he had made in interviews.
Ma becomes the second person to be found guilty under the law imposed by Beijing in July last year. He has lodged an appeal against the verdict.
The first person sentenced under the NSL was former waiter Tong Ying-kit who was jailed in late July for nine years for terrorist activities and inciting secession. Tong was accused of driving his motorcycle into three riot police on 1 July 2020 while carrying a flag with the protest slogan “Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution of our times.”
The watershed ruling on Tong has profound implications for freedom of expression and judicial independence in Hong Kong.
The “Captain America” case has further fuelled fears about the rapid erosion of the city’s room for freedom and the strength of the court in upholding civil liberties.
Like the Tong case, the Ma judgement has significant implications for related cases but the ruling has attracted far less attention. The general public reacted with indifference mixed with a feeling of futility and helplessness. It does not bode well for civil rights and liberties in the city.
The significance of the Ma case lies with the judge’s ruling on what constituted incitement.
Ma’s lawyer said Ma had no intention whatsoever of committing a crime, but was just expressing his views. Merely chanting slogans should not be deemed as a violation of the NSL, the lawyer argued. That he urged people to discuss the issue of independence in schools did not necessarily mean the result of the discussions would be a yes to independence. It could be a no.
Importantly, his lawyer argued Ma had merely expressed his personal views without giving thought of how to make it happen through an action plan. Referring to Ma’s slogan “Hong Kong people building an army”, his lawyer said it was just an empty slogan, again, without a plan.
In sentencing, judge Stanley Chan described the case as serious. He rejected the argument by Ma’s lawyer that the level of incitement in his speeches was minimal, saying Ma could turn more people into the next Ma Chun-man.
Put simply, judge Chan said that although the actual impact of Ma’s speeches in inciting others has been minimal, this was insignificant when determining whether his act constituted incitement.
This view is markedly different from the reaction of the media and the public over Ma’s political antics.
Ma had drawn the attention of journalists when he turned up in protests for obvious reasons. But no more. The lone protester neither had a sizable group of followers nor electrified the sentiments of the crowd at the scene.
The heavy sentencing of Ma will worsen the chilling effect of the national security law on freedom of expression. Importantly, it will have serious implications for a list of incitement cases currently in the process of trial.
In a statement on the sentencing, Kyle Ward, Amnesty International’s deputy secretary general said: “In the warped political landscape of post-national security law Hong Kong, peacefully expressing a political stance and trying to get support from others is interpreted as ‘inciting subversion’ and punishable by years in jail.”
With no sign of an easing of the enforcement of the law 16 months after it took effect, the international human rights group decided to shut down its local and regional offices in the city by the end of the year. They said the Beijing-imposed law made it “effectively impossible” to do its work without fear of “serious reprisals” from the Government.
Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam responded by saying no organisation should be worried about the national security law if they are operating legally in Hong Kong, adding Hong Kong residents’ freedoms, including that of speech, association and assembly were guaranteed under Article 27 of the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution.
To a lot of Hongkongers, the assurance, which is an integral part of the former British colony’s “one country, two systems” policy, is an empty promise.
The power of the national security law in curtailing freedoms in other aspects of everyday life in Hong Kong has been widely felt.
In October, the legislature rubber-stamped an amendment to the film censorship ordinance, giving powers to the authorities to ban films that are considered as “contrary to the interests of national security.” The phrase, or “red line” in the law, is much broader than the original version, which targeted anything that might “endanger national security.”
Even before the bill was passed, a number of films and documentary films relating to the 2019 protest were not allowed to be shown in public locally. They include the award-winning Inside the Red Brick Wall and Revolution of Our Times, a nominee in the 2021 Taiwan Golden Horse Film Award.
Moves to revive political censorship in film are part of the authorities’ intensified campaign against threats to national security. While targeting political activists, the net has been widened to curb what officials described as “soft confrontation” and “penetration” through films, art and culture and books.
The University of Hong Kong has called for the Pillar of Shame, a sculpture by Danish artist Jens Galschiot, to be removed from the campus, citing concern over the national security law.
On the legislative front, security minister Chris Tang has given clear reminders that more needs to be done to protect national security, pointing to crimes in Basic Law Article 23 that have not been covered in the national security law.
He has vowed to target spying activities and to plug loopholes following the social unrest in 2019. Tang cited the example that helmets and free MTR tickets were distributed free to protesters during the protests, claiming there were state-level organising behaviours, potentially by actors from outside the country.
Both the central and Hong Kong authorities have labelled the movement as a “colour revolution” with hostile foreign forces behind it, without giving concrete evidence.
In addition to spying, a bill on Article 23 will also cover theft of state secrets and links with foreign organisations. Officials gave no timetable. But it is expected to be at the top of the agenda for the new legislature, which is due to be formed after an election is held on 19 December.
Officials are also looking at introducing a law on “fake news” to eliminate what they deem as lies and disinformation, which went viral on social media during the 2019 protest. The Government and the Police claimed they were major victims of this false information.
Looking back to mid-2020 when the idea of a national security law was first mooted, officials assured Hongkongers the law would only “target a very small number of people”.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
29 Sep 21 | Magazine, Magazine Editions, Volume 50.03 Autumn 2021
Journalist
John Sweeney is a writer and journalist who has investigated Scientology and Russian interference in the US elections. He is the host of the Hunting Ghislaine podcast.
Activist and producer
Kelly Duda is an activist and producer and director of the documentary Factor 8: The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal.
27 Sep 21 | China
“First, we stood up, then we got rich, and now we got strong.” Chinese officials are repeating this slogan over and over, China analyst Mareike Ohlberg recently told the audience at an Index on Censorship event. “Part of being a strong country means being able to influence or determine what people talk about, not just in China but globally.”
Confucius Institutes were established in 2004 with the stated mission of teaching Chinese language and culture abroad and are widely acknowledged as one of the ways China exerts its influence around the world. In 2010, the Confucius Institute headquarters (known as Hanban) received the ‘Chinese Influence the World Award’. “People often ask me about the Confucius Institute’s role in soft power,” said its founder, Xu Lin, at the award ceremony. “We are indeed trying to expand our influence.”
Confucius was a sixth-century philosopher, educator, and quasi-religious figure, who has since come to symbolise peace and harmony. By promoting this image and avoiding any reference to Marxist ideology, a Chinese state institution has made its way onto more 550 university and college campuses, and into 1,172 primary and secondary school classrooms around the world. According to the New York Times, “The carefully selected label [of Confucius Institutes] speaks volumes about the country’s soft-power ambitions.”
In the West, the largest number of Confucius Institutes are found in English-speaking countries. Why? “The Chinese government is minimalist,” Ohlberg replied. “If you have the government in your pocket, why do you need a Confucius Institute?” The UK has approximately 30 Confucius Institutes, five in Scotland. France has 21, Germany has 19, and Italy has 16. There are 103 in the EU.
By operating primarily on campuses, Confucius Institutes are unlike other countries’ cultural organisations, like the British Council, Alliance Française, or Goethe Institutes. Tao Zhang of Nottingham Trent University believes this enables the Chinese authorities “to gain a foot-hold for the exercise of control over the study of China and the Chinese language.”
Confucius Institutes are also unlike European institutes in that they are directly managed by the Chinese government. According to the Netherlands Institute of International Relations, “[t]his offers Confucius Institutes the possibility to unilaterally promote Chinese policy and ideas in a one-sided way, to commit censorship, or to stimulate self-censorship about China among students, pupils and the wider public”.
This report looks the rise of the Institutes and whether those fighting for freedom of expression should be worried.
24 Sep 21 | Bosnia, China, News and features, Turkey, Volume 50.03 Autumn 2021 Extras
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”117556″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Almost three decades ago, some three million books and countless artefacts went up in flames when Sarajevo’s National and University Library – inside the Vijecnica (city hall) – was burned to the ground. The destruction of the Vijecnica at the beginning of the war was a symbol for one of the aggressor’s main objectives – silencing the soul of the city and crushing the cultural identity of an entire society.”
So said Dunja Mijatović, the current Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, who was born in Sarajevo when it was part of Yugoslavia.
Just weeks before the anniversary of the burning of the library on 25 August 1992, Mijatović spoke to Index about its symbolism and what its destruction was meant to achieve.
She quoted Heinrich Heine’s play, Almansor: “Where they burn books they will also, in the end, burn people.”
Libraries and archives have been targets for centuries, and the reason is always the same: it’s about taking away knowledge and stifling free thinking.
Libraries are, and have always been, symbols of freedom – the freedom to think and learn and find documents and books to debate and discuss.
Throughout history, when authoritarians take power and seek to control thought and behaviour, they either lock up libraries or destroy the manuscripts and books inside them.
The Serbian forces who burned the Sarajevo library were seeking to obliterate evidence of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s existence as a successful multicultural and multi-ethnic state. The documents they burned told a different history from the one that the army leaders wanted to portray.
Omar Mohammed, who reported as Mosul Eye on the Isis occupation of his city in Iraq, risked his life to blog anonymously about the occupiers’ wish to destroy books as well as to execute people as they sought to repress the population.
Mohammed told Index that it was not just the university library that was destroyed in Mosul, but it was the one that was reported on the most.
Many other libraries, even private collections, were wiped out. “The only possible reason is because knowledge is power,” he said. “Once you prevent people from accessing knowledge then you will have full control over them.”
Like many other scholars who have delved into the history of libraries, Mohammed understands that it is not about the buildings themselves.
“They don’t want people to have this access because they know if people write the history, it will be completely different from the one they wanted it to be,” he said.
Targeting libraries sends out a powerful message to scholars, historians and scientists, he added.
“When they see that such people are able to totally target the libraries, that they are literally able to destroy everything, it’s a manifestation of brutality.”
Today, Richard Ovenden, the most senior librarian at the Bodleian libraries at the University of Oxford, is worried about libraries in Turkey being closed under pressure from the government of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
According to some sources, at least 188 libraries were closed there between 2002 and 2020.
Ovenden’s book, Burning the Books, looks at the history of the intentional destruction of knowledge. He was recently contacted by a Turkish student, who said: “I’ve just read your book and I want you to know how bad it is in Turkey, because libraries are being destroyed. And all the things that you write about are true in Turkey today.”
Ovenden said: “There is an absolutely authoritarian control over knowledge. Attacks on knowledge are being exercised by the authoritarian leader of Turkey right now. It is the ability for the population to generate their own ideas and to come up with their own thoughts that some governments, some authoritarian powers, some dictators and rulers do not like.”
When dictatorships seek to establish that certain minorities don’t exist, or haven’t lived somewhere, getting rid of the documentary evidence is very convenient.
Archives that establish the existence of Uighurs in China and Muslims in parts of India also look like targets.
Ovenden feels that what is fantastically important about libraries is that they “preserve the past thoughts and ideas of human beings so they’re parts of that evidence base”.
He added: “They’re also disseminating institutions [where] you can borrow the books, you can come and take those ideas away and write other books about them, or pamphlets, or newspaper articles, or whatever it is.”
Governments around the world are failing to protect libraries as a resource, sometimes by withdrawing or drastically reducing funding.
In the UK, almost 800 libraries closed between 2010 and 2019, and a major campaign kicked off in Australia this year to save the national archives.
Michelle Arrow, professor of history at Macquarie University in Sydney, argued in April that if funding cuts were not reversed, irreplaceable audio-visual collections would fall apart. After a public campaign, the national government has delivered some extra funding, but this has not solved all the archives’ problems.
She told Index that with a reduction in staff of almost 25% since 2013, more staff would be needed to deal with the large backlog of requests to view archived material.
She said the archives contained “unique records, and they touch almost every Australian: it is a democratic archive, a collection of ordinary people’s records, rather than famous or renowned Australians”.
While some countries are seeing numerous library closures due to financial or other threats, there are new defenders coming to light. In the coastal city of Santa Cruz in California, there’s a massive investment in upgrades to current libraries, and new ones are opening over the next two years.
Santa Cruz mayor Donna Meyers told Index: “In California, we just tend to believe in public institutions. We believe that public education, public libraries, all of that, lead to a better community, lead to a more informed society.”
Santa Cruz residents passed a special tax – by 78% of the vote – to pay for investment in the libraries which, Meyers says, is a sign of how committed the community is to libraries being around for future generations.
Back in Sarajevo, Mijatović can see the new library that rose from the ashes of the Vijecnica from her terrace.
She said: “One hopes that the soul and the people of Sarajevo will recover and that new generations will hopefully enjoy this magnificent symbol of Sarajevo and, more importantly, live in peace.”
Library destruction in recent history
1914: German troops destroy the library of the Catholic University of Louvain
1939: The Great Talmudic Library in Lublin is destroyed by the Nazis
1966-76: Chairman Mao destroys libraries across China as part of the Cultural Revolution
1976-79: The Khmer Rouge deliberately destroy libraries across Cambodia, including the Phnom Penh national library
2013: Islamic troops set fire to the library in Timbuktu, Mali
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