The largest wave of security law arrests to date in Hong Kong

 

Picture from July 1st, 2015, of one of the more than 50 people arrested 

today: the woman with the yellow umbrella -- Claudia Mo

 

Picture from July 1st, 2017, of another those arrested today

under the national security law: "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung

 

Like on too many occasions in 2020 (see here and here for examples), I woke up this morning to learn that arrests had been made of pro-democracy personalities.  Since it's happened so often already, some might say that I -- and the rest of Hong Kong -- should have been prepared for this occurence.  But even while it's not unexpected, it's hard to digest. 

 

For one thing, new ground was broken today in terms of the scale of the operation: with some 1,000 police officers having been involved in the arrest of 53 people accused of subversion (and therefore liable to be sentenced to life imprisonment under China's national security law for Hong Kong imposed last summer).  There also was an exponential increase from just the day before in the number of people arrested under the security law Beijing has imposed on what The Guardian's report of today's event described as "the once semi-autonomous city".  (Clearly, an update is needed to the Hong Kong government's "Hong Kong -- the Facts" page -- specifically, that which states that "According to the Basic Law, Hong Kong's political system and way of life remain unchanged for 50 years.") 

 

For another, the "crime" that these people (pictures and profiles of whom can be found in this humanizing Twitter thread) are being accused of amounts to their having "conspired to obtain 35 or more seats at the Legislative Council".  In other words, as lawyer Antony Dapiran has pointed out: "they tried to win an election".  

 

More specifically, as has also been pointed on Twitter, this time by Reuters Global News Desk editor Gerry Doyle: "the crime here, let's remember, is holding an unofficial primary to see who might run for office. that's it".  (And for the record: that primary attracted more than 610,000 voters; many of whom are hardly assured by security minister John Lee's statement today that they will not be targeted for arrest by the authorities.)    

 

As history professor Jeppe Mulich was moved to note: "If there was ever any doubt that the [National Security Law] was about criminalizing dissent, today's mass arrest of opposition lawmakers should settle it."  To which Hong Kong resident daaitoulaam added: "It also confirms that the reason the [Legislative Council] elections were postponed was the [Chinese Communist Party] knew they were going to lose control of LegCo. *today's subversion arrests are for organising a primary to help pan-dems win that majority in the legislature*"  

By the way, remember the pandemic that was supposedly the reason for the postponement (by at least a year) of the Legislative Council election that was supposed to take place last September -- for which many of today's arrestees would have run for office?  Let the record show that Hong Kong had 25 new Wuhan coronavirus cases today; less than half the number of the political arrests made in the territory just this morning.

 

Something else of note is that another line was crossed today with the first ever arrest of a foreign national who also happens to be a human rights lawyer.  (John Clancey is an American citizen, Hong Kong resident, the chairman of the Asian Human Rights Commission and treasurer of Power for Democracy.)  How prescient Financial Times journalist Yuan Yang was when she Tweeted the following on June 3rd of last year: "This might be coming to Hong Kong — @cdcshepherd's @ft profile of 6 people imprisoned in China on national security grounds, from a human rights lawyer to a Uighur scholar to the 2 Canadians still held as retribution for Huawei's CFO's house arrest." 

 

Will this move foreign governments to stronger, if any, action?  Given their records thus far, it would be realistic, not pessimistic, to predict that there will be, at best, just "hand wringing and stern words and waffling" but not much by the way of anything substantive on their parts.  At the same time, Beijing and its Hong Kong acolytes do seem to have deliberately timed these mass arrests (and latest bid to snuff out Hong Kong's political opposition) when much of the world would be distracted by the American senate runoff vote in Georgia, two weeks before Joe Biden’s inauguration, and just after the European Union agreed a trade deal with China.  Which would seem to indicate that they do care to some degree at least about international reaction to their actions.  

 

Already, the calls have come, both from within and outside the European Union, to call off that trade agreement which has yet to be ratified by the European parliament.  Hong Kong's last governor, Chris Patten, had particularly strong words on this matter: stating that the deal “spits in the face of human rights and shows a delusional view of the Chinese Communist Party’s trustworthiness”; and is "a massive strategic blunder" on the part of the European Commision.

 

In addition, Antony Blinken, Joe Biden's nominee for Secretary of State, has issued the following statement: "The sweeping arrests of pro-democracy demonstrators are an assault on those bravely advocating for universal rights. The Biden-Harris administration will stand with the people of Hong Kong and against Beijing’s crackdown on democracy."  And while there of course is the possibility that all this is just "stern words" and hot air, it also is true enough that it's far more assuring for those of us who still care about democracy and human rights to see and hear these utterances from these quarters than if there had been silence all around.