Police terrorism

As a protester is shot in the street, this is how Britain could make good on its obligations to the Hong Kong people
By Johnny Patterson

This week has seen a dramatic escalation of police violence in Hong Kong. 

While Britain remains endlessly distracted by Brexit, the rest of the world was watching its former colony as a teenage pro-democracy protestor was shot by Hong Kong police.
Confrontations flashed throughout the city just as the 70th anniversary of Communist China sent fireworks sparkling into the Beijing sky. 

During one of these confrontations, a sixth-form student was shot from point blank range with a live bullet and left in a critical condition.
Police brutality is being normalised in Hong Kong. 

A recent Amnesty International report confirms “an alarming pattern of the Hong Kong Police Force deploying reckless and indiscriminate tactics” in their arrests, as well as beating and torturing people in detention. 

The police have consistently responded to a minority of violent protestors disproportionately: targeting protestors indiscriminately, and sometimes even civilians taking no part in the protests.
The press now appears to be an acceptable target. 

A journalist for an Indonesian-language publication was recently shot with a rubber bullet, despite being clearly identifiable as a member of the press. 

The Foreign Correspondent’s Club reported that over the weekend, journalists were hit by tear gas canisters and rubber bullets, targeted with pepper spray, verbally threatened by the police, and blocked from documenting the arrests of protestors. 

Buzzfeed’s Rosalind Adams live-tweeted herself being hit with batons while trying to film one arrest.
“Police terrorism”, as it is dubbed by many Hong Kongers, has been on the frontpages of the newspapers on an almost daily basis for months. 

The result has been a total collapse of public trust in both the government and the police force.

Hong Kong protesters "day of grief" on communist China anniversary



Any lasting solution to the political crisis will need bold actions for reconciliation to be taken by the Hong Kong government and their counterparts in Beijing. 

But there is little sign of this.
The Hong Kong government have refused to agree to what look like moderate and reasonable demands from protestors – including calls for the police force to face an independent inquiry into their actions. 

Instead it has doubled-down and given the police licence to act with impunity.
And so, in the meantime, we must stand with the people of Hong Kong.
The UK has a special duty to the people of Hong Kong. 

Not only are Hong Kongers at the forefront of the global battle for freedom and democracy, but we have a historical duty to stand with them.
When the UK handed Hong Kong over to China in 1997, the arrangement was made on the basis that the rights and freedoms of the people of Hong Kong would remain unchanged until 2047. 

The handover agreement, the Sino-British Joint Declaration, writes into international law a moral and legal obligation for the UK to stand up for the freedoms of the people of Hong Kong.

The integrity of this agreement is gravely threatened by the events of recent weeks. 

Dominic Raab issued a statement condemning the “disproportionate” use of force by the police force yesterday, but we must prove that our support for Hong Kong is more than just empty words.
Here are three ways we can do this. 

First, the government should consider adopting legislation which will ensure that there are consequences if the Hong Kong government continues to trample on people’s freedoms. 

Magnitsky sanctions, targeted at the individual violators of human rights, could be applied to officials who are deemed to be responsible for breaches of the Joint Declaration.

Second, post-Brexit, any trade agreement with Hong Kong or China must include a Hong Kong human rights clause. 

Trade law is more strongly enforceable than other types of international law, and so it is critical that we do not betray our commitment to Hong Kong in any future negotiations.

Finally, many parliamentarians have signalled their support for various campaigns which would provide an insurance policy by extending the rights applicable to holders of British National (Overseas) passports.
Unlike in other British colonies, Hong Kong citizens were not allowed to maintain their British citizenship after the handover. 

Instead they were fobbed off with second tier “BNO” passports which the late-Lord Ashdown claimed were a scandal rivalling Windrush. 

Even soldiers who had served in the British army were not given the right to retain their British citizenship.
It would be easy for the government to expand the rights held by BNO passports, and the Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Tugendhat has argued that this would provide many Hong Kongers with the “confidence to stay in Hong Kong”, knowing that they have a possible way out.
During the handover negotiations, prime minister John Major declared that “Hong Kong will never walk alone”. 

At this pivotal hour in Hong Kong’s history, we must not forget our unique ties to the people of Hong Kong. 

We must stand with them in their fight for freedom. 

They must not walk alone.

Britain cannot shirk its duty to defend Hong Kong from China's authoritarianism

Arrests of pro-democracy activists show China is breaching its commitments to the “one country, two systems” agreement.
BY CATHERINE WEST

When Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in June that the Sino-British Joint Declaration no longer has any “practical significance”, shivers were sent down the spines of those who want democracy to flourish in Hong Kong.
“It is not at all binding for the central government's management over Hong Kong. The UK has no sovereignty, no power to rule and no power to supervise Hong Kong after the handover,” he said.

Going by the British government's failure to respond firmly to the jailing of Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow for standing up for democracy, it appears the UK agrees.
The Sino-British Joint Declaration, signed in 1984, was committed to the “one country, two systems” principle, making Hong Kong a Special Administrative Region of China but ensuring a range of freedoms, which future British governments would ensure were upheld.
China’s creeping influence over Hong Kong’s legal affairs and freedom of speech are not new. 

Earlier this year, Amnesty International said the human rights situation in Hong Kong was at its worst since the handover in 1997. 

That assessment followed the disappearance of five Hong Kong booksellers, later found to have been in the custody of the Chinese police, with one describing having been blindfolded and kept in a tiny cell. 

In other instances journalists have been attacked by police.
But in Hong Kong, resistance is on display in familiar scenes on the streets. 

Tens of thousands of people have marched through the financial and legal hub in protest at the jailing of the three pro-democracy activists for their role in the Umbrella Revolution in 2014 – a fundamentally peaceful movement.
It was a moment where people came out to fight for universal suffrage, which I continue to support as key to safeguarding the island’s stability and prosperity (and something Hong Kong’s Basic Law secures by stating that the chief executive should be selected by “by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures”).
For showing courage in fighting for universal suffrage, Wong has already served 80 hours of community service and Law 120 hours. 

Chow received a three-week suspended prison sentence a year ago.

Yet now Wong has been jailed for six months, Chow for seven months and Law for eight months.
Wong was even summoned again to court today for an ongoing contempt charge related to the 2014 "Occupy" pro-democracy protests.
Perhaps more importantly, Wong is now not eligible to stand for the legislative council for five years due to his six-month jail sentence, while Law, who was a member of the council, was removed from office.
This all comes after a 2016 order from Beijing for Hong Kong’s government to dismiss officials thought lacking in their allegiance to China, which led to six legislators being banned from holding office.
Many, including Hong Kong’s last Governor, Chris Patten, have suggested Wong, Law and Chow's sentences were a deliberate attempt to prevent them from taking on these legislative positions.
Patten added that he hopes friends of Hong Kong will speak out, having previously written the UK is “selling its honour” to secure trade deals with China, letting down pro-democracy activists who have been trying to fight to maintain freedoms that were guaranteed during the deal that ended over 100 years of British rule.
The prising open of the case by the Hong Kong government to push for tougher punishments reinforces concerns about Beijing’s willingness to interfere in Hong Kong’s democracy. 

As Amnesty International stated, seeking jail terms was a “vindictive attack” on freedom of expression.
China’s enthusiasm for subverting democracy has recently been on show in its attempts to censor Cambridge University Press (CUP), which initially complied with a Chinese request to block access to more than 300 articles from the China Quarterly, a leading China studies journal, including articles on Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square Massacre. 

Following public pressure CUP have now reversed their position.
But while freedoms granted under the Joint Declaration may have contributed to Hong Kong becoming fertile ground for those supportive of democracy and critical of China, it does not free the United Kingdom from its responsibility to uphold the “one country, two systems” principle, which promises extensive autonomy and freedoms to the island, except in the area of foreign relations and military defence.
The Joint Declaration is a legally binding treaty. 

It is registered with the UN and is still in force. 

As the UK is a co-signatory, it should be doing all it can to make sure it is upheld.
Yet, in late June one of Hong Kong’s most respected democracy activists Martin Lee described the British government as "just awful. I’m afraid I cannot find any kind words to say about that.”
It is not for either China or the UK to unilaterally decide the Joint Declaration is null and void. 

The people of Hong Kong understand that and are standing up for democracy in the face of adversity. Our Government has a duty to stand by them.

Perfidious Albion

Britain is looking away as China tramples on the freedom of Hong Kong – and my father

By Angela Gui

Angela Gui: ‘My father’s case is only one out of many that illustrate the death of the rule of law in Hong Kong.’ 

Iam too young to remember the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997 and its promise for the new world I would live in. 

But I have lived to see that promise trampled.
The Sino-British Joint Declaration, signed to pave the way for the handover, was supposed to protect the people of Hong Kong from Chinese interference in their society and markets until 2047. 

Yet as the handover’s 20th anniversary approaches, China muscles in where it promised to tread lightly while Britain avoids eye contact.

Gui Minhai: the strange disappearance of a publisher who riled China's elite
As Xi Jinping has consolidated his grip on Chinese politics since he took office in 2013, Beijing has increasingly ignored the principle of “one country, two systems” on which the handover was based and actively eroded the freedoms this was supposed to guarantee.
In October 2015, my father Gui Minhai and his four colleagues were targeted and abducted by the agents of the Chinese Communist party for their work as booksellers and publishers. 

My father – a Swedish citizen – was taken while on holiday in Thailand, in the same place we’d spent Christmas together the year before. 

He was last seen getting into a car with a Mandarin-speaking man who had waited for him outside his holiday apartment. 

Next, his friend and colleague Lee Bo was abducted from the Hong Kong warehouse of Causeway Bay Books, which they ran together. 

Lee Bo is legally British and, like any Hong Konger, his freedom of expression should have been protected by the terms of 1997.
Their only “crime” had been to publish and sell books that were critical of the central Chinese government. 

So paranoid is Beijing about its public image, that it chooses to carry out cross-border kidnappings over some books. 

Causeway Bay Books specialised in publications that were banned on the mainland but legal in Hong Kong. 

The store’s manager, Lam Wing-kee, who was taken when travelling to Shenzhen, has described Causeway Bay Books “a symbol of resistance”. 

In spite of Hong Kong’s legal freedoms of speech and of the press the store is now closed because all its people have been abducted or bullied away. 

Other Hong Kong booksellers are picking “politically sensitive” titles off their shelves in the fear that they may be next; the next brief headline, the next gap in a family like my own.
I continue to live with my father’s absence – his image, messages from his friends, the cause he has become. 

Turning 53 this year, he spent a second birthday in a Chinese prison. 

Soon he will have spent two years in detention without access to a lawyer, Swedish consular officials, or regular contact with his family.
My father’s case is only one of many that illustrate the death of the rule of law in Hong Kong. 

Earlier this year, Canadian businessman Xiao Jianhua – who had connections to the Chinese political elite – disappeared from a Hong Kong hotel and later resurfaced on the mainland. 

In last year’s legislative council elections, six candidates were barred from running because of their political stance. 

The two pro-independence candidates who did end up getting elected were prevented from taking office. 

If “intolerable political stance” is now a valid excuse for barring LegCo candidates, then it won’t be long before the entire Hong Kong government is reduced to a miniature version of China’s.
The Joint Declaration was meant to guarantee that no Hong Kong resident would have to fear a “midnight knock on the door”. 

The reality at present is that what happened to my father can happen to any Hong Kong resident the mainland authorities wish to silence or bring before their own system of “justice”. 

Twenty-one years ago, John Major pledged that Britain would continue to defend the freedoms granted to Hong Kong by the Joint Declaration against its autocratic neighbour. 

Today, instead of holding China to its agreement, Britain glances down at its shoes and mumbles about the importance of trade. 

It is as if the British government wants to forget all about the promise it made to the people of Hong Kong. 

But China’s crackdown on dissent has made it difficult for Hong Kongers to forget.
Theresa May often emphasises the importance of British values in her speeches. 

But Britain’s limpness over Hong Kong seems to demonstrate only how easily these values are compromised away. 

I worry about the global implications of China being allowed to just walk away from such an important treaty. 

And I worry that in the years to come, we will have many more Lee Bos and Gui Minhais, kidnapped and detained because their work facilitated free speech. 

Hong Kong’s last governor, Lord Patten, has repeatedly argued that human rights issues can be pushed without bad effects on trade. 

Germany, for example, has shown that this is entirely possible, with Angela Merkel often publicly criticising China’s human rights record. 

With a potentially hard Brexit around the bend, a much reduced Britain will need a world governed by the rule of law. 

How the government handles its responsibilities to Hong Kong will be decisive in shaping the international character of the country that a stand-alone Britain will become. 

I for one hope it will be a country that honours its commitments and that stands up to defend human rights.

Chris Patten: UK risks selling its honour on Hong Kong

"I wonder what has happened to our sense of honour and our sense of responsibility"

By Danny Vincent

Chris Patten: "What has happened to our sense of honour and our sense of responsibility?"

The former governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, says the UK risks not meeting its promises to the territory and "selling its honour" in an attempt to reach trade deals with China.
Speaking to BBC Newsnight, Lord Patten said the UK had let down "a generation" of democracy activists.
It is 20 years since Hong Kong was returned to China after more than a century of British rule.
The UK government says it takes its commitments to Hong Kong seriously.
Anson Chan, former Hong Kong chief secretary -- who worked as Lord Patten's deputy -- also expressed deep concern about China's behaviour towards Hong Kong.
Citing the example of the alleged kidnapping by China of five booksellers and other rights abuses, she told BBC Newsnight that the "one country, two systems" form of rule itself is under threat.
"Unfortunately the rest of the world -- particularly Great Britain -- would rather pretend not to see what is going on," she said.
"If they continue to ignore this steady erosion, by the time they wake up to the fact that 'one country, two systems' exists only in name, it will be too late."
In the 1980s the Chinese and British leadership agreed that Hong Kong would be guaranteed certain freedoms not enjoyed in the rest of China -- freedom of press, freedom of assembly and a partially-elected law-making council.
This principle, known as "one China, two systems", was a part of the Sino-British joint declaration -- an international agreement guaranteeing Hong Kong those freedoms after the handover.
Lord Patten said the UK government has not "manifestly stood up for Hong Kong".
"I wonder what has happened to our sense of honour and our sense of responsibility -- particularly in Britain. It's above all a British question," he said.
"We signed the joint declaration with China. It's a treaty at the UN. It's supposed to commit us to standing up for Hong Kong's rights until 2047."
"And you don't get much sense of the British government actually standing over those promises and obligations and I think that's a great pity."
Lord Patten said the UK risks putting its desire to do trade with China, over its commitment to Hong Kong.
"It's all for derisory, ludicrous reasons," he said. 

"The argument that the only way you can do trade with China is by kowtowing to China on political issues is drivel -- it's complete nonsense."
"I worry about how people are prepared to sell our honour for alleged trade deals which never actually happen. I think that that would be calamitous. And what do we represent to the world if that's what happens?"
In 2015, five publishers selling critical articles about the Chinese leadership disappeared, only to reappear in detention in the mainland.
One bookseller had been abducted while in Hong Kong. 

Four of the publishers -- including a British passport-holder -- were eventually returned to Hong Kong. 

One Swedish national remains in Chinese detention.
Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Hong Kong in 2014 in what came to be known as the "Umbrella Protests". 

The protests lasted several weeks, and captured the world's attention, but failed to achieve any concessions from Beijing.
" I feel very strongly that we let down the parents of this generation of democracy activists. I think it would be a tragedy if we let down these kids as well," Lord Patten said.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: "The UK takes our longstanding commitment under the Sino-British Joint Declaration very seriously."
"We believe that 'one country, two systems' continues to be the best arrangement for Hong Kong's long term stability and prosperity, as it has been for nearly 20 years.
"We hope and expect that 'One Country Two Systems' will be respected and successful long into the future."
The spokesperson added: "We regularly discuss the importance of respect for 'one Country, two Systems' and Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy with the Chinese Government. The Foreign Secretary made this clear to his Chinese counterpart when they met in London in December."

This is the beginning of the end of Hong Kong

The ‘one country, two systems’ principle and the Sino-British Joint Declaration are now completely shattered and irrelevant

By Claudia Mo

Protesters clash with police at China Liaison Office, where they occupied the road and were pepper sprayed. 

The Chinese government’s decision to bar two elected lawmakers from taking up their seats marks the beginning of the end of Hong Kong.
Samuel Johnson once said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”. 

And today China has said that in Hong Kong, patriotism is so vital that it trumps freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of thought, which are all now completely irrelevant.
By preventing the two pro-independence politicians from taking office, the Chinese government has opened the door to disqualify anyone from Hong Kong’s government if they are determined to not be loyal to Beijing.
This sets a very, very dangerous precedent because China has now started to form a habit of ruling Hong Kong by decree. 

Rule of law has become nonexistent in Hong Kong and there is no telling how that’s going to affect the confidence of foreign investors. 

We have to plug the dyke, but there’s nothing Hong Kong people can do and that explains all the fear, anger, resentment and frustration you now see in the city.

Of course, according to the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the power of interpretation is vested in Beijing, but that sort of power should not be used lightly. 

Every policeman has the power to stop you in the street and haul you off to the station if you’re acting suspiciously, but no one expects every policemen to do that lightly. 

Beijing is abusing its power.
Beijing loyalists in Hong Kong’s legislature will say, ‘We need to protect the integrity of the motherland, you’re not allowed to say things like ‘Hong Kong is not China.’’ 

They worry these sentiments will spread to places like Tibet and Xinjiang, western Chinese provinces with large populations of ethnic minorities and a history of chafing under Beijing’s yoke.
The Chinese government never promised “one country, two systems” to Tibet or Xinjiang, but that promise was made to Hong Kong. 

However, that and the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which sought to safeguard freedoms in the former colony, is now completely shattered and has become irrelevant. 

China’s mandarins now behave exactly like the Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984. 

Whatever and whenever they find something politically incorrect, they will just change it and make it bend to their will.
The oath-taking saga is merely an excuse to make sure Hong Kong will be reined in. 

Chinese officials needed an issue and pounced at the first opportunity, because in Beijing’s eyes Hong Kong has become uncontrollable and disobedient, especially after the umbrella movement.
This is a very frightening trend that shows Beijing will interpret Hong Kong laws any time it wants. Anytime they feel parts of the Basic Law are not up to their current standards of political correctness, they will change it and tell Hong Kong courts to obey.
This move is not only a blow to our legislature, but also local courts as well. 

What are our judges for if Beijing steps in whenever it wants?
Today Beijing talks about anti-independence, tomorrow it talks about anti-self-determination and the day after it can talk about anti-democracy altogether.
While I have met some young people who have foreign passports who want to stay and fight for Hong Kong, they have a safety net and can leave whenever they want. 

I’m very worried about the young who can’t afford to leave and have no choice but to fight on against extremely difficult odds.
But we still need to fight, because if we don’t, we will definitely never get what we want.