Lord Patten lashes China's claims about 'black hands' and CIA interference

• China broke the promises they made to Hong Kong
• The mask ban put in place across the city last month was madness

By Jason Fang, Bang Xiao and Michael Walsh

Hong Kong's last British governor, Chris Patten, has hit back at his Beijing critics who accuse him of trying to "devastate the city" in the wake of months-long pro-democracy protests.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Lord Patten, the current chancellor of Oxford University, of "hypocrisy, bigotry and ruthlessness" after he suggested the mask ban put in place across the city last month was "madness".
They said Lord Patten, who served as the governor of Hong Kong from 1992 until Britain's handover of the city to China in 1997, was using a "black hand" to meddle in Hong Kong's affairs.
In a wide-ranging interview with the ABC's The World program, Lord Patten said the accusations were "so preposterous that nobody of any intelligence should give it any credence".

He also criticised other "absurd arguments" made in China's state media about Hong Kong's history and the current unrest, including allegations the Chinese Communist Party gave the city democracy, and claims that foreign powers have helped organise the protests.
Here's some of what Lord Patten had to say:

On the claim that 'Britain never gave Hong Kong democracy':
"When Britain talked about introducing greater democracy in Hong Kong, who was the biggest critic?
Who said this mustn't happen? The Chinese Communist Party.
Because they said to Britain: 'You mustn't do that, because if people get democracy like in Singapore or Malaysia or other British colonies, they'll think they're going to have independence, and that's not going to happen'.
One of the most absurd arguments is the suggestion that China was in favour of democracy — China's never been in favour of democracy …
The old bit of propaganda, that 'Well, you didn't do it all before 1997, so you mustn't criticise us afterwards' — how many years is it since 1997?
22?
What are the Chinese Government doing? 
What have they done, which has actually produced a generation of people who want to be independent of China?"

On state media claims that he is a 'black hand':
"It's simply propaganda …
If you want to know what's happening in Hong Kong, if you're a Westerner, you look at the Hong Kong Free Press website — I hope in saying that I'm not going to bring about its closure.
The idea that kids, who were born in many cases way after I left Hong Kong, are being manipulated by a 75-year-old former diplomat is so preposterous that nobody of any intelligence should give it any credence, let alone write it …
I'm not criticising the Chinese for not implementing democracy, what I'm criticising them for is the squeeze they've put on freedoms right across the board in Hong Kong.
They broke the promises they made in developing democracy in Hong Kong. 
And you can't argue against that, because it's clear, it's on the record.
And I think that was a terrible error.

On claims the CIA is organising protests in Hong Kong:
"Well, I wonder how much a totalitarian regime understands what's happening down below, among the people.
The Chinese Foreign Minister is a highly "intelligent" man, and only a week or so ago [he] was saying the demonstrations were all a result of things being whipped up by the CIA or the British Government — the British Government couldn't manage a traffic jam in London, let alone organise demonstrations in Hong Kong.
I think that was both insulting to people in Hong Kong, and simply failed to understand the degree of concern about the erosion of Hong Kong's freedoms and way of life. 
How come 2 million people back in June were on the streets and demonstrating.
How come that even today, after all these weekends of violence, people are still demonstrating the things they believe in.

Should the UK offer protection to protesters, and what happens now?:
"I would like Britain to do that, but I would hope it wouldn't be necessary …
I hope Hong Kong will continue to be the sort of Chinese community with its own freedoms that people want to live in and to help thrive.
For China's benefit as well as for their own …
The most helpful thing China could do is, to borrow a phrase, to cut [Carrie Lam] some slack, to give her some elbow room so she could actually listen more to people in Hong Kong, listen to those who are giving very wise advice …
But the trouble is that at each turn, at every stage, the Hong Kong Government has done rather too little, too late.
And I'm sure that's because it's having to press for every inch of change that it makes."

Chris Patten is in Australia to give the Fraser Oration at Melbourne University. You can watch his full interview with The World on the ABC News Channel at 10:00pm AEDT.

Australian Parliamentarian Tim Wilson Marches with Hong Kong Protesters against Oppressive Regime

Wilson marched with the protesters on Sunday as they defied a new ban on face masks that was meant to deter rioting but has instead led to more anger.
Associated Press

Anti-government protesters run away from tear gas during a demonstration in Wan Chai district in Hong Kong on Monday. 

Perth -- An outspoken Australian parliamentarian on Monday branded the China's Communist Party "oppressive" after marching with protesters in Hong Kong.
A former Australian human rights commissioner, Tim Wilson of the Liberal party, said he has been inspired by the pro-democracy movement in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory, where protests against Beijing have continued for four months.
Wilson marched with the protesters on Sunday as they defied a new ban on face masks that was meant to deter rioting and calm the situation but has instead led to more anger. 

It was a rare public act of defiance from a prominent Australian politician towards Beijing over the issue.
The protests were sparked by a proposed law that would have allowed some criminal suspects to be sent from Hong Kong to mainland China for trial, but have since morphed into a larger anti-government movement.
Protesters are upset at what they say are Beijing's increasing influence over the former British colony, which was promised a level of autonomy when it was handed back to Chinese rule in 1997.
Wilson told ABC Radio on Monday that China's Communist Party was an "authoritative regime by nature and authoritative regimes are oppressive and that's why people are standing up for their future." 

He said he supported "non-violent protest." 

Wilson declined further comment when contacted by The Associated Press.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been measured in his public comments over the Hong Kong protests. 

Australia relies on China for one-third of its export earnings.

Hong Kong’s Mask Ban Reveals Carrie Lam’s True Face

The city’s leader announced an emergency law to restore order. It was a deliberate provocation.

By Alan Leong Kah-kit

Protesters defied a new emergency law banning masks at public gatherings in Hong Kong on Saturday.

HONG KONG — This city has long prided herself on respecting the rule of law — the ultimate guarantee of Hong Kongers’ freedoms, human rights and way of life. 

It is one of the attributes that make Hong Kong stand apart from cities on the Chinese mainland. 

Our practice of common law, together with an independent judiciary served by high-caliber judges, has earned us the trust and the confidence of friends and trading partners all over the world. 

Our legal system’s predictability and its freedom from political interference guarantee that no one will fall victim to the arbitrary exercise of power by government authorities.
Or so it did. 

All of this changed last Friday when Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s besieged chief executive, unilaterally decided to invoke the Emergency Regulations Ordinance to prohibit face masks and other coverings at public gatherings. 

The new regulation — formally called the Prohibition on Face Covering Regulation and, more commonly, the face-mask ban — makes it a criminal offense punishable by one year of imprisonment for people to hide their faces in ways that prevent identification, even if they are participating in lawful meetings or marches.
Lam said the ban was designed to stop violence and restore order, but her move only added fuel to the fire. 

Thousands of people — in masks — took to the streets all weekend, even after service was suspended across the entire underground system. 

There were clashes with police. 

A 14-year-old was shot in the leg.
The ordinance is an archaic statute from 1922, when Hong Kong was a British colony and the acts of the city’s governor were regulated by the monarchy in Britain. 

Since Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, it has had its own Constitution, the Basic Law, which is supposed to protect the city’s autonomy from China under the “One Country, Two Systems” principle. 

Acts of the chief executive should be reviewed for compliance with the Basic Law.

• Article 39 provides that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights will continue to apply in Hong Kong after 1997. 
• Article 73 vests the legislative power of Hong Kong in the Legislative Council. 
• Article 8 says that any laws previously in force that contravene the Basic Law cannot be maintained.

On Friday, Lam violated all of these provisions. 

To take one example: She usurped the lawmaking function of the Legislative Council by bypassing the council altogether. 

LegCo is scheduled to reconvene on Oct. 16; Lam could have waited until then to propose her ban as a bill. 

She now claims that her regulation is subject to “negative vetting” by LegCo, or vetting after the fact. Yet it should not have come into force until after it was reviewed by LegCo.
Lam announced the ban by fiat, and with that, Hong Kong has just moved one step closer to becoming an authoritarian regime, ruled at the executive’s pleasure without institutional or systemic safeguards. 

We are moving away from the rule of law toward rule by law.
The invocation of the emergency ordinance is unlawful, and so the face-mask ban should be deemed inherently void.
Lam knows this fact only too well, and she knows that she may yet lose any judicial review of the law’s constitutionality. 

So why did she do this? 

She is reported to have initially been reluctant to pass the measure. 

But then, suddenly, she passed it — just three days after returning from Beijing, where she attended celebrations for the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
Xi Jinping might well have given her the marching order. 

The Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) is haunted by the images of millions of peaceful marchers taking to the streets of Hong Kong to demand the freedom, the human rights protection, the rule of law and the preservation of Hong Kong’s way of life that they have been promised under the Basic Law but have been treacherously denied.
The authorities’ calculation seems to be that if masks are banned, future rallies will be smaller. 

Some protesters will not be deterred. 

But others — especially peaceful demonstrators who are civil servants and employees of government-funded NGOs, Chinese businesses or conglomerates that actively trade with China — will be reluctant to assemble or march. 

Already, the local airline Cathay Pacific has fired employees, including pilots, who had expressed sympathy on social media for the protest movement.
At the same time, the pushback by dedicated protesters this weekend was so predictable that it is impossible not to think that it, too, was a desired effect. 

The ban was also designed to provoke the more radical factions of the protest movement into escalating violence. 

Lam and the C.C.P. can then invoke any such deterioration, as well as, say, acts of arson — or even, some fear, crimes by agent provocateurs planted by the police — to call the movement a riot and its participants vandals.
One of their hopes is that more Hong Kongers may then distance themselves from the movement because of the increased social costs. 

Another is that the movement will lose some of the moral authority it seems to command with liberal democracies around the world.
A more sinister explanation is that further violence on the streets could become an excuse to impose a curfew, formally or de facto, and pass other extreme emergency regulations. 

Members of the major pro-government party are also said to worry about their prospects in the district council elections scheduled for late November: Chaos would be a convenient pretext to postpone or cancel those.
Legislators from the democratic camp have started a legal battle challenging Lam’s ordinance and are asking that it be reviewed judicially. 

The High Court refused this weekend to order an interim injunction to stop the ban from taking immediate effect but has said that the case could be heard in full before the end of October.
We already knew that “One Country, Two Systems” was dying; now we know that the rule of law is dying too.