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.
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.
10 Jun 22 | Belarus, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Opinion, Philippines, Russia, Ruth's blog, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States
This week has been awful.
The news has been devastating and all consuming. But that feels like it’s becoming the norm.
In Belarus, our friends remain under attack – Andrei and Irina’s trial began on Monday. We have no idea of the outcome.
In Brazil, Dom Phillips and his colleague Bruno Araújo Pereira remain missing – but with reports of fresh blood being found, our hearts break for their loved ones.
In Ukraine, we see daily the death and destruction caused by the Russian invasion, up to 200 Ukrainian soldiers killed a day. And the reports of cholera in Mariupol are beyond my comprehension in the twenty-first century.
In Russia, the crackdown against dissidents continues unabated – with limited coverage. 160 people are currently defending criminal cases for anti-war statements and this week a close associate of Alexei Navalny was tried in absentia and placed on the international wanted list.
In the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr has been elected as the next President and made his first visit to the US as President-Elect – seemingly the legacy of his parents no longer an electoral or diplomatic issue.
In Hong Kong, six brave democracy protesters were arrested for the temerity of marking the anniversary of Tiananmen Square.
In the US – the inquiry into the Capitol Riot is officially underway – highlighting just how fragile our collective democracy is and how desperately we need to cherish and protect it.
And that’s before I even touch on what is happening in the UK, the ongoing political crises, and the ideologically incoherent approach to freedom of expression protections.
And in too many countries this is now framed through the prism of a cost-of-living crisis as a scale that we haven’t seen for a generation.
My only comfort is that we know what is happening. In a digital age it is very difficult for any leader, however repressive, to completely silence dissent about their domestic actions. The joy of a free press in democratic countries is that it enables us to be informed and to demand more and better – from our own leaders and from those that claim a global role. It enables us to analyse the scale of the threat and to try and prioritise our efforts in assisting those brave enough to stand against tyranny.
Index exists to provide a platform for the persecuted. We work every day with those who refuse to be silenced. The least we can do is listen to them and then join their fight.
30 Mar 22 | Hong Kong, News and features, Volume 51.01 Spring 2022
Jimmy Lai Chi-Ying, Hong Kong’s 74-year-old self-made billionaire, is a dissident. His cause is freedom. For championing this cause, he has been jailed since December 2020. One of the crimes he was found guilty of was lighting a candle in public to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when thousands were slaughtered. His real sin, however, was publishing Apple Daily, Hong Kong’s lone voice for freedom. This voice was smothered in June 2021 with the jailing of its senior journalists.
Lai could have remained free – he has homes in Paris, London, Kyoto and Taipei – but chose to stay in solidarity with the Hong Kong democrats being prosecuted. The UK abandoned Hong Kong in 1997 on China’s promise that its seven million-plus people would have “a high degree of autonomy” with “Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong”.
However, the democrats’ demand for China to honour this pledge was rebuffed from the start and dealt a final blow in 2020 when Beijing imposed direct rule by promulgating a vague and sweeping National Security Law along with an electoral system modelled on Iran’s that allows only handpicked candidates. Virtually all democrat leaders have since been jailed.
Lai was born in Guangzhou. He escaped communist rule at the age of 12 by stealing his way into Hong Kong, hidden in the bottom of a small fishing boat. By the time he was in his 20s, he had risen from a child labourer to owning his own business.
He started Giordano, an international clothing retailer. Along the way he learned English – initially by reading the dictionary while living in the factory where he worked – and took to the brand of free-market economics espoused by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. He credited his success to the freedom he enjoyed in British Hong Kong. He vows to fight for this freedom so others may have the same opportunities.
Like most Hong Kong people, Lai’s political awakening came in the spring of 1989 when a democratic movement led by students erupted in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. He was sympathetic to their aspirations and lent them support by raising money through his Giordano stores.
After communist tanks mowed down demonstrators on 4 June 1989, he dedicated himself to upholding their torch of democracy by going into publishing in Hong Kong, where the press remained free.
He first launched Next, a weekly magazine, in 1990, and then Apple Daily on the eve of Hong Kong’s transition to Chinese rule. With their bold and fiercely independent editorial stance, both publications enjoyed wide readership and were successfully “cloned” in Taiwan. As the communists tightened their grip on Hong Kong, Lai was first forced to sell his controlling interest in Giordano and then his publications were subjected to orchestrated advertising boycotts. Though financial losses piled up, Lai did not waver. Readers’ loyalty remained to the end: when Apple Daily printed its last edition of one million copies on 24 June 2021, thousands of people waited in the middle of the night for it to roll off the press.
Lai is now represented by the London-based lawyer Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC. She has called Lai “a man of courage and integrity” and vowed to “pursue all available legal remedies to vindicate Mr. Lai’s rights”.
Lai’s wife Teresa is a devout Catholic. He himself converted to Catholicism when Hong Kong came under Chinese rule. China’s communists, often godless, are known to be ruthless, but in this couple they may have met their match. Because of his faith, Lai does not seek temporal salvation. He quoted the 15th-century German priest Thomas a Kempis in a letter to a friend from prison: “If thou willingly bear the Cross, it will bear thee, and will bring thee to the end which thou seekest, even where there shall be the end of suffering; though it shall not be here.”[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]*****
‘I don’t want my life to be a lie’ – letters from Lai’s prison cell
Jimmy Lai has been in jail since December 2020. He has told friends and associates from his cell that he does not want to turn his “life into a lie” and willingly pays the price for upholding “truth, justice, and goodness”. He said he bears this price gladly and sees it as God’s grace in disguise. Here are excerpts from some of his prison letters.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]‘The muted anger of the Hong Kong people is not going away’
Apple Daily published its last edition of one million copies on 24 June 2021. This was how he reacted to it from prison. While deploring what he called “this barbaric suppression”, he was weighed down with guilt that his staff were incarcerated on his account and wished he could share “the pain of the cross” they bear. He vowed to find a spiritual way to help them.
The forced closure of Apple Daily Hong Kong showed clearly what [a] shipwreck life in Hong Kong has become for them. The damage done [by] the Hong Kong government and Beijing’s legitimacy long term is much greater [than] the temporary benefit of quieting down the voice of freedom of speech.
Yes, this barbaric suppression intimidation works. Hong Kong people are all quieted down. But the muted anger they have is not going away. Even those emigrating will have it forever. Many people are emigrating or planning to.
This Apple Daily shutdown only aggravates it, making it certain to people that the hopelessness of Hong Kong is irreversible. The more barbaric [the] treatment of Hong Kong people, [the] greater is their anger, and power of their potential resistance; [the] greater is the distrust of Beijing, of Hong Kong, [the] stricter is their rule to control.
The vicious circle of suppression-anger-and-distrust eventually will turn Hong Kong into a prison, a cage, like Xinjiang. World, cry for Hong Kong people.
Pastor Lee came to visit… Told me he had visited Cheung Kim Hung, our CEO, and Lo Wai Kong, our Chief Editor. They are both being remanded. Cheung, being a devout Christian, is doing fine. But Lo, who has no faith, is miserable.
What I can do to help him? Send him a Bible? But Bible is no faith, not panacea. Maybe I should ask Cardinal Zen to visit him to see what we can do for him.
It would be disingenuous to say that by creating Apple Daily I have put him in this situation. But I do have a guilty feeling and want to share his price of his cross, which is weighing too heavily on him. There must be something I can do to help. I will not cease until I find a way.
“If we suffer courageously, quietly, unselfishly, peacefully, the things [that] wreck our outer being perfect us within, and make us. And as [we] have seen, more truly ourselves.”
‘There is always a price to pay when you put truth, justice and goodness ahead of your own wellbeing’
Lai wrote in July 2021 to console his hotel staff in Canada for their suffering during the pandemic and held out the hope that soon he could share “the coming prosperity” with them. He also updated them on his life in prison, telling them not to worry about him, though when they “pass by a church, do go in and pray for me”.
Dear Bob,
If you are worry[ing] about me, please don’t. I am keeping myself busy reading the scriptures, gospels, theology and books of the saints and their lives… Life is peaceful and edifying… There is always a price to pay when you put truth, justice, and goodness ahead of your own comfort, safety and physical wellbeing, or your life becomes a lie. I choose truth instead of a lie and pay the price. Luckily God has made this price a grace in disguise. I am so grateful.
So, don’t worry about me. However, when you pass by a church, do go in [and] pray for me. Believers and non-believers, the sun shines on you the same. So the Lord will listen to you the same. Thank you! Hope to see you soon,
Cheers,
Jimmy.
‘I am changed… I can’t see myself going back to business again’
Lai wrote to a friend, James, in September 2021, saying that, by clinging to Christ, his life in prison “is full” and spiritually “at peace”. However, he was worried about his wife, Teresa, whom he said was weighed down by grief.
James,
I am doing fine, keeping myself busy, studying gospels, scriptures, theology and books on the saints and lives and prayers, touching the fringe of Christ’s cloak to live, so to speak. Life is full and at peace. I am learning and changed a lot. Can’t see myself going back to business again. All have to depend on others.
I do worry about my wife Teresa. She has lost a lot of weight under the grief of my situation. Lucky she has God [to] abide [with] her. May God bless you all.
Cheers,
Uncle Jimmy
‘But with her prayers, she will slug it through’
In October 2021, Lai wrote to a business associate about his happiness when his family visited him. He urged him to “keep writing”.
I am doing fine here. Happy to see Teresa, Claire, Tim and Ian and my brother… Teresa looks weak and weighed down by grief. But with her prayers, she will slug it through.
I am keeping myself busy here. Spiritual study, drawing and trying to improve my English writing skill. Take care!
So sweet of you to write me. Please keep writing. May God be with you all! Cheers, Uncle Jimmy
‘If thou willingly bear the Cross, it will bring thee [that] which thou seekest… ’
In a November 2021 letter to a friend, Lai copied the following quote from the 15th-century German priest Thomas a Kempis, author of The Imitation of Christ.
“If thou willingly bear the Cross, it will bear thee, and will bring thee to the end which thou seekest, even where there shall be the end of suffering; though it shall not be here.
“If thou bear it unwillingly, thou makest a burden for thyself and greatly increaseth thy load, and yet thou must bear it.”
‘Lord, remember those who shed their blood in Tiananmen Square’
Lai was sentenced 13 months in jail for attending the vigil in Victoria Park, Hong Kong, on 4 June 2020 that marked the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. He protested his innocence by reading the following statement in court before he was sentenced. He appealed to God to grant the young men and women who died in Tiananmen their redemption.
I did not join the 4 June vigil in Victoria Park. I lit a candle light in front of reporters to remind the world to commemorate and remember those brave young men and women who 31 years ago in Tiananmen Square put the truth, justice and goodness above their lives and died for them.
If [to] commemorate those who died because of injustice is a crime, then inflict on me that crime and let me suffer the punishment of the crime, so that I may share the burden and glory of those men and women who shed their blood on June 4th to proclaim truth, injustice and goodness.
Lord, remember those who shed their blood, but do not remember their cruelty. Remember the fruits those young men and women have borne because what they did and grant, Lord, that the fruits these young men and women have borne may be their redemption. May the power of love of the meek prevail over the power of destruction of the strong.
This article and Lai’s letters appeared in the 50th anniversary issue of Index on Censorship magazine, alongside a picture that Lai drew of Jesus Christ on the cross. They were published on 15th March 2022. Click here for options on how to see and read the article in full.
