The bill is called Safeguarding National Security Bill. A 212-page draft is available online in PDF format. Associated Press reports that the legislation “includes stiff penalties and more power to suppress dissent” (March 8, 2024).
The penalties for Hongkongers who talk out of turn may be harsher. But Hong Kong officials do not need “more” power to suppress dissent, since they already have all the power that mainland officials have to suppress it.
Systems
In 2020, the National Security Law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong essentially wiped out the second system of the “two systems” that China had pretended to agree to preserve for fifty years after Britain handed Hong Kong to China in 1997. Democracy, freedom of speech, things like that are dead in Hong Kong now, or gasping their last breaths.
According to Associated Press:
Hong Kong unveiled a proposed law that threatens life imprisonment for residents who “endanger national security” on Friday, deepening worries about erosion of the city’s freedoms four years after Beijing imposed a similar law that all but wiped out public dissent….
The proposed law will expand the government’s power to stamp challenges to its rule, targeting espionage, disclosing state secrets, and “colluding with external forces” to commit illegal acts among others. It includes tougher penalties for people convicted of working with foreign governments or organizations to break some of its provisions.
The law would jail people who damage public infrastructure with the intent to endanger national security for 20 years—or life, if they collude with an external force to do so. In 2019, protesters occupied the airport and vandalized railway stations.
Similarly, those who commit sedition face a jail term of seven years, but colluding with an external force to carry out such acts increase that penalty to 10 years.
On Thursday, an appeals court upheld a conviction for sedition against a pro-democracy activist for chanting slogans and criticizing the Beijing-imposed 2020 National Security Law during a political campaign.
Businessmen and journalists are worried that the law, being so sweeping and multifarious in its characterizing of what constitutes a threat to national security, “could criminalize their day-to-day work.” Luckily, though, the government “has sought to allay concerns by adding a public interest defense under specific conditions in the proposal.”
If the concerns of the businessmen and journalists working in Hong Kong are now allayed, one can only conclude that their understanding of how the Chinese Communist Party operates is a few cans short of a six-pack. Escape while you still can, businessmen and journalists. No half a million Hongkongers will be surging into the streets to save you. Those days are gone.
Fully, faithfully
The English-language draft of the Safeguarding National Security Bill starts off by saying that “WHEREAS it is a must…to resolutely, fully and faithfully implement the policy of ‘one country, two systems’ under which the people of Hong Kong administer Hong Kong with a high degree of autonomy,” etc. So the lying is immediate.
In the NOW, THEREFORE part of the bill, we are told that the highest principle “of the [dead] policy of ‘one country, two systems’ is to safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests….” These words say nothing about what once distinguished Hong Kong from the mainland. The government of the mainland, which has now fully subsumed Hong Kong, has always been direly concerned about “national security.”
We next learn that “human rights are to be respected and protected, the rights and freedoms, including the freedoms of speech, of the press and of publication, the freedoms of association, of assembly, of procession and of demonstration, enjoyed under the Basic Law…are to be protected in accordance with the law….”
Eh? Hold on. It’s a Declaration of Independence from the mainland! This provision shows that the Chinese Communist Party officials currently ruling Hong Kong are throwing off the shackles of the Party and insisting on all the standard-issue Western-style rights and freedoms. The last five years are to be wiped out and Hong Kong can now start over, afresh, anew, as a free polity once more. Hong Kong is hurtling back to the status quo ante of, say, 1996 or so. Probably, the Hong Kong government is planning to erect a statue of John Locke even as we speak.
A stunning reversal…
Oh my God, it’s fantastic: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of publication, freedom of association, freedom of procession, freedom of demonstration!!!!! All these and human rights in general are to be respected and protected!!!!! All the rights that had been ripped away from Hongkongers are to be restored!!!!!
I guess this also means that all the Hongkongers rotting in prison for using the freedom of speech will be released soon, maybe in ten minutes. This is surely going to be a relief for someone like Jimmy Lai (shown above), the former publisher of Apple Daily who has been on preordained-outcome trial for the crime of repeatedly objecting to tyranny and who until now had been facing the prospect of being imprisoned for life.
Except that—well, there’s that “are to be protected in accordance with the law” part. Not in accordance with the requirements of individual rights, not in accordance with a constitution that protects individual rights. Not in accordance with justice and truth. In accordance with “the law.” Which consists of just exactly whatever the Chinese Communist Party says it consists of.
So if you live in Hong Kong, you can say whatever you want, sure, your freedom of speech is absolutely and indissolubly protected, right up to the moment what you say violates “the law,” which is very concerned about “national security,” which, among other things, involves securing the absolute and indissoluble right of the government to be free of criticism and other opposition by the likes of you.
We next are told that “for acts and activities endangering national security, there must be adherence to active prevention in accordance with the principle of the rule of law, and suppression and punishment in accordance with the law,” which means that “no one is to be convicted and punished for an act that does not constitute an offense under the law….”
The law
The law, the law, the law, the law. Not only “the law” but “the rule of law”; not only “the rule of law” but even “the principle of the rule of law.”
We must try to remember what the Associated Press said, reporting on one of many similar examples: “On Thursday, an appeals court upheld a conviction for sedition against a pro-democracy activist for chanting slogans and criticizing the Beijing-imposed 2020 National Security Law during a political campaign.”
A slightly earlier AP story said that the pro-democracy activist, Tam Tak-chi, “was convicted on 11 charges in 2022, including seven counts of ‘uttering seditious words.’ A judge at the lower court took issue with him chanting the popular protest slogan ‘Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times’—words the government says imply separatism—and criticizing the Beijing-imposed National Security Law during a primary campaign.”
Convicted? For speaking those words? What about the right of freedom of speech, so inspiringly affirmed in the draft of Hong Kong’s new national security law?
To be sure, the convicted pro-democracy activist does have the right of freedom of speech, as long as he does not do any activism or advocate democracy. But here we have a blatant case of somebody who used freedom of speech to violate the law. Freedom of speech ends where the law begins, you might say. The law is the law. Just as the rule of law is the rule of law and the principle of the rule of law is the principle of the rule of law.
What nobody can deny is that Tam Tak-chi was caught in flagrante delicto “chanting slogans and criticizing the Beijing-imposed 2020 National Security Law during a political campaign.” Which is against the law. Hong Kong law, Chinese law, Chinese Communist Party law.
