I guess I must revise my view that Hong Kong’s new National Security Law is superfluous except maybe with respect to the length of the sentences stipulated for various imaginary crimes.
After China imposed the 2020 National Security Law on Hong Kong, a process was set in motion that has been rapidly ending political freedom and judicial objectivity, making the governance of Hong Kong more or less indistinguishable from that of the mainland.
The quondam democracy and liberties of Hong Kong have been wiped out. So this mission is accomplished.
To twice impose a regime that obliterates the possibility of rational, self-respecting human life in a society—what’s the point? Maybe the main point is the propaganda value.
Crimes
In Hong Kong as on the mainland, there seem to be at least two categories of crime. Things like mugging, burglary, rape, murder, all the things that are merely violations of the rights and lives of fellow human beings: that’s one category.
Then there’s the category of expressing honest criticism of the Chinese government, known as endangering national security, committing separatism or subversion, and so forth. Related to these is actual spy work for foreign countries, which gets people promptly killed in China.
Tyrannizing one point four billion human beings is hard, hard, hard, hard work. The toil never ends. And once you’ve got the one point four billion people more or less cowed, you don’t want anything to jeopardize this condition of universal dispirited and submissive thralldom.
To keep it all going and help people rationalize their submission, maybe one thing you must do is repeat yourself again and again. Keep sputtering rationales for the arbitrary, brutal nature of the regime in part by issuing laws and more laws all saying don’t step out of line or you’ll be sorry! All of which China chucklefuckledly calls manifestations of the “rule of law.”
So if the new National Security Law mostly repeats the old National Security Law, that’s just what state propaganda tends to do anyway. Repeat. But it seems that Hong Kong’s new National Security Law is not just a rerun; it also adds new imaginary crimes.
Maybe another thing you must do to maintain totalitarian control is invade the sanctity of the confessional. According to Gladys Kwok, reporting for Bitter Winter on March 19, 2024, Hong Kong’s “proposed new Security Law will compel priests and pastors to disclose information about ‘treason’ learned in confession.”
Most countries in the world, including some that are not democratic, protect the secret of confession. Catholic priests and clergy of other religions cannot be compelled to disclose what they have learned from a penitent during a confession. It is a basic principle of religious liberty that has been honored for centuries, and one that acknowledges the special nature of confession in the Catholic and other religious traditions.
This principle is now threatened in Hong Kong by the proposed new security law, known as “Article 23.” The implication for confession of the new law were announced by Hong Kong’s Secretary for Justice Paul Lam Ting-kwok, when he stated that a person could be punished with up to 14 years in prison for knowing that another person has committed “treason” and not reporting the “traitor” to the authorities.
There are no exceptions for religious confession, meaning that priests and pastors will have the alternative of either breach the most sacred principles of their religion or go to jail.
Last week, international experts led by Benedict Rogers, cofounder and Chief-Executive of Hong Kong Watch, signed a statement protesting the proposed violation of the confessional privilege and of freedom of religion or belief. They also noted that the Article 23 law in general makes the already bad National Security Law in force in Hong Kong worse and creates other problems for human rights.
How is the Chinese Communist Party going to know that a confessor said “The CCP sucks” and that the priest did not report this to the authorities? Will the CCP be bugging the confession booths? My uninformed guess is probably not, though you never know, and maybe both parties should start scanning for bugs before the confession gets underway.
