Book fair censorship and still more lawfare waged in Hong Kong's courts in recent days

 

On sale at the Hong Kong Book Fair last year;

will it be again this year, I wonder?

 

Let's begin with a look forward (rather than back) for a change: This year's edition of the Hong Kong Book Fair is slated to open two days from now.  As with last year, I plan to go again and get some book bargains.  But already, I know that at least one local publisher, one of whose books I bought at last year's Hong Kong Book Fair, will not have a booth there -- and not because it didn't want to either.

 

Hillway Culture (whose marquee tome last year was a bilingual version of George Orwell's Animal Form featuring illustrations by VA Wong Sir) was among the publishers informed that their applications to have booths at the event was rejected.  The response of the people behind it was to organize an alternative book fair.  But the day before the 1st Hongkongers' Book Fair -- which had attracted a dozen exhibitors -- was set to take place, the venue's owner axed the contract that it had made with the event's organizer, causing the book fair (which is currently ongoing) to have to take place online instead.     

 

Returning to the subject of the Hong Kong Book Fair: Last year was the first time the event had taken place after China imposed a national security law on Hong Kong (on June 30th, 2020) and I was actually heartened when there to see some books on sale that I hadn't thought would be the case.  Sadly though, I expect the selection to be much more limited this year.  

 

For example, although it's not illegal for them to be sold in Hong Kong (and certain local bookstores have made copies of them available for sale), I don't expect to see either Karen Cheung's The Impossible City: A Hong Kong Memoir or Louisa Lim's Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong -- two of the best books about Hong Kong that I've read -- to be on sale at this year's Hong Kong Book Fair.  And neither do I expect to see works such as Johannes M. M. Chan's Paths of Justice (published by the University of Hong Kong press).        

Speaking of paths of justice: there have been quite a few court decisions that have made the news in recent days.  In addition to the jail terms meted out to veteran activists Koo Sze-yiu and "Grandma" Alexandra Wong, last week also saw six of the 12 youths whose failed attempt flee by speedboat to Taiwan in August 2020 shocked Hong Kong plead guilty to "perverting the course of justice" and seven of the 12 handed prison sentences of between 7 to 10 months that were in addition to the time they served behind bars in Mainland China after being caught illegally entering Chinese waters and separate to other sentences they will be given if found guilty of other, earlier charges levelled upon them (which were the reasons for their having decided to flee Hong Kong back in 2020).  

 

In the latter part of last week, news also broke of Tsang Chi-kin, the teenage protestor shot at point-blank range by a policeman on October 1st, 2019, having been found and arrested in Hong Kong after some two years as a fugitive (despite claims of his having gone into exile).  Reportedly, he and three others -- like the 12 youths mentioned in the previous paragraph -- had planned to take a boat and flee to Taiwan by sea; only in their case, they didn't even make it to the pier that they had planned to leave from, never mind the boat they had planned to go on.        

Effectively paraded in front of photographers on his way to court this past Thursday, journalists and observers questioned the ethics of showing those photographs of him looking dishevelled and the narrative presented by the police.  In a message to the media, Dr Yau Wang-tat, the PhD student who had sought to help Tsang Chi-kin after he was shot (and was arrested and served time for his "sin", and finally released from prison last month) said that "he was confused as the prosecution said in court the defendants remained silent but the police then came out with a story full of details".  It was also reported that "Yau added that he was “unsettled for a long while” as he saw news photos of Tsang and other defendants taken within the court premises, where photo taking is normally banned" and, pointedly, "Yau said he doesn’t know what to believe for now and remains confused."

 

About the only good news that came out of the courts last week was Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal overturning the city’s first offensive weapon conviction involving zip ties this past Friday.  Lawyer Samuel Bickett Tweeted the following measured evaluation of this development: "Let's give credit to the [Court of Final Appeal (CFA)] here—today’s ruling will absolutely help many of our friends in jail or awaiting trial. But CFA is still avoiding genuinely difficult cases. If CFA is too afraid of Beijing's criticism take on these cases, then little will change for the better."

 

Earlier in his thread on the subject though, he had pointed out the following: The Department of Justice (DOJ) and "lower courts have been applying a Chinese mistranslation of the English law that vastly expanded its scope. This was obvious as soon as DOJ began doing it back in 2019. DOJ didn’t care. Corrupt magistrates didn’t care. Hongkongers were arrested and jailed as a result." Also: the "DOJ’s use of this law was so clearly wrong that it was nearly impossible for the CFA to rule otherwise. This seems to be the CFA’s pattern in political cases: hear political cases & rule in favor of Hongkongers only when lower court practice is so absurd as to be indisputable."

 

I'll also leave it to Samuel Bickett to make a pronouncement on the decision announced today by the Department of Justice to demand that Tong Ying-kit, the first person found guilty under the Beijing-imposed national security law, pay over HK$1.38 million in court fees for his failed legal bids, including one lodged against the decision to try him without a jury.  "This is an extraordinary level of petty vindictiveness by the Hong Kong DOJ against a man who only sought to protect his rights in court. It’s this sort of abuse of discretionary power that really underscores the need for Western sanctions against prosecutors."