An eventful start to the week in Hong Kong and over in Mainland China

 

Restaurant shutters emblazoned with a plea 

to save the Hong Kong 12

 

Hong Kong is beautiful but also behind bars 

 

After a period of relative calm over the Christmas period, things went back to "normal" -- or, rather, what passes for normal in Hong Kong these days -- yesterday morning with the news of Lam Cheuk-ting being arrested yet again, this time for allegedly disclosing the personal information of individuals being investigated by police in relation to the July 21st, 2019, mob attacks in Yuen Long.  Apart from the ridiculousness of a victim of the attacks being accused of breaking the law for revealing details about that evening's attackers, we also have the twist this time around of  Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC) -- rather than police -- officers doing the arresting and the irony that comes from Lam Cheuk-ting being a former ICAC investigator himself!   

 

Meanwhile, over on the other side of the Hong Kong-Mainland China border, Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer turned citizen journalist, was jailed for four years for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble".  Put in a very different way: she had conducted livestream reporting from Wuhan in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak there.  In other words: she had been, at great risk to herself, seeking to find out and let people know what was going on in that Mainland Chinese city. 

 

As was noted in The Guardian's article about her arrest, she is not the only one who has gotten into trouble with the authorities in China over her Wuhan coronavirus reportage.  "Among at least half a dozen citizen journalists targeted in Wuhan, Fang Bin, was arrested in February but his detention location remains secret. Chen Mei and Cai Wei are awaiting trial in Beijing after they were arrested in April for archiving censored information about the virus. Chen Qiushi, detained in Wuhan in February, was released to his parents’ home under close surveillance." 

 

Also mentioned in the article was that yesterday saw the trial in Shenzhen of 10 Hong Kongers who were detained after allegedly trying to reach Taiwan by boat in August and now charged with organising or participating in an illegal border crossing.  (Two other members are minors who will be tried at a later date.)   Although the trial was supposed to be "open", it was closed to foreign diplomats and reporters.  In addition, the families of the accused were unable to attend the hearing and thus have not been able to see their relatives for some four months now.

 

As bad as things have become in Hong Kong, it ought to be realized that things have not become as bad as over in Mainland China.  Yet.  I'm not just talking about what's being done to the Uighurs.  Rather, to quote from that piece in The Guardian about Zhang Zhan once more:  

China’s notoriously opaque justice system has a conviction rate of about 99%, and often sees defendants denied full legal assistance. The last-minute trials of the Hong Kong 12 and Zhang came amid a flurry of activity by Chinese authorities, who have a history of using the holiday period, when many western governments and NGOs are on Christmas break, to run trials and make arrests.

In December alone, authorities have arrested a Bloomberg journalist, Haze Fan, on unspecified national security allegations; human rights activist, Ou Biaofen, after he publicised the case of an activist sent to a psychiatric facility; and documentary journalist Du Bin. Ou and Du were both arrested for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”.

Authorities also reportedly delayed the trial of Australian writer Yang Henjun, charged with espionage and allegedly tortured during his two years in detention. On Sunday a court refused to hear an appeal against the four-year sentence for human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, who publicly called for constitutional reforms including multi-candidate elections.

Even while Hong Kong's judiciary is seen as having its independence being chipped away, it still is by no means a given that Hong Kong judges will act the way that the government wants it to.  To be sure, there are verdicts that go in favor of the authorities (including the denial of bail to security law suspect Ma Chun-man today and another security law suspect, teenage activist Tony Chung, being sentenced to four months in prison for unlawful assembly and desecrating the national flag also earlier in the day).  But there also are ones that are not as well as those whose verdicts don't completely please anyone: such as that at a trial yesterday which saw the judge hand in "not guilty" verdicts to six people accused of rioting but convicted one man -- who had identified himself as having been a first aider -- of the charge after noting that he had tried to run away from the police. 

 

Away from the courts, the Hong Kong government has reversed a decision to demolish a century-old underground reservoir in Bishop's Hill, Sham Shui Po, one day after a public pressure campaign prompted the authorities to suspend work at the site.  Chalk one win to civil society and hail the concerned citizen who literally ran right up to the excavator and stopped the demolition work of what looks to be an architectural and heritage jewel.  

 

If only the Hong Kong government had been as prompt to reverse its decision in the face of public pressure with regards to the extradition bill.  *Sigh*  Instead, we have a situation where a chief executive beholden to Beijing has done so much in the past couple of years or so to, if not (yet) outright kill her city, done so much damage to it.