Spotlight on Hong Kong, the national security law trial of Jimmy Lai, and prosecution witness Andy Li

 

Winter is -- and gray days are -- here in Hong Kong

 

This past Saturday, the temperatures dropped quite a bit and there's now a distinct chill in the air.  Still, it wasn't the cold air that made me shiver this morning but, rather, what I read in a piece by Shibani Mahtani for the Washington Post about what happened to Andy Li, a pro-democracy activist who's scheduled to be a key witness for the prosecution in the long-delayed national security trial of Jimmy Lai which finally got underway today. (How long delayed? Here's pointing out that he was arrested back in August 2020 and in and out of jail through to December 2020, when he was decisively denied bail and been behind bars since!)

 

The title of an article in The Guardian about the trial begins with the words "The world watches" -- and it does feel like Hong Kong is back in the international spotlight today.  Jimmy Lai's trial begins "two weeks after another landmark hearing came to an end on 4 December. The Hong Kong 47 mass trial of pro-democracy activists was the biggest national security law case since the legislation was implemented in Hong Kong in June 2020, quelling a year of protests against the tightening grip of the Chinese Communist party on the city. Lai’s trial has just one defendant. But," Amy Hawkins asserts, "it will be just as, if not more, significant for Hong Kong’s global standing."

 

"Lai, who turned 76 in jail this month, is charged with colluding with foreign forces under the national security law, as well as sedition. If convicted, which experts say is highly likely, the British national faces spending the rest of his life in prison."  Something noted there, which many people and media have not done so for much of this time, is that Jimmy Lai has a British passport -- a full fledged one as opposed to the "British National (Overseas)" passports issued to many Hong Kongers. But, due to his ethnicity, the authorities in Beijing -- and their proxies in Hong Kong -- consider him Chinese.  As well as an enemy of the Chinese state.

A reminder: the British government was a co-signer with the Chinese government of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. That 1984 document set the conditions in which then British-ruled Hong Kong was transferred to Chinese control and for the governance of the territory after 1 July 1997.  And it's the Sino-British Joint Declaration that had it that Hong Kong would be governed from July 1st, 1997, to June 30th, 2046, under something that came to be known as "One country, two systems": i.e., it would be part of the People's Republic of China but a Special Administrative Region that would enjoy a "high degree of autonomy" and, among other things, would have universal suffrage for its residents -- something which, of course, does not exist in the rest of China.

 

Returning to The Guardian's piece about Jimmy Lai's upcoming trial: "Lai’s trial is expected to run until spring 2024, with a verdict expected in autumn. It will be presided over by a panel of judges handpicked by the Hong Kong chief executive to handle national security cases.  Elaine Pearson, the Asia director for Human Rights Watch, [has] said [that] “Lai’s trial has been marred by serious violations of fair trial rights such as denying him a lawyer of his own choosing and handpicking judges. Beijing seems intent on imprisoning one of its most powerful critics for many years, possibly for the rest of his life.”"

 

Something else that is disturbing about the trial: its having witnesses for the prosecution like Andy Li.  A member of the Hong Kong 12 taken into custody in Shenzhen after a bid to flee to Taiwan by speedboat was foiled by Chinese coastguards, he looks to have been tortured while behind bars in Mainland China.

 

Quoting from Shibani Mahtani's piece: "Li, a 33-year-old gifted programmer who during the protests became a significant player in international lobbying and fundraising efforts, has already pleaded guilty under the national security law for his own role in the democracy movement, and he is expected to tie Lai to an alleged foreign conspiracy against Hong Kong and China. But Li was mistreated while in Chinese custody, a year-long Washington Post examination of the case found, raising questions about whether his testimony will be voluntary and reliable." 

 

Since returning to Hong Kong, Andy Li has been held in a Hong Kong psychiatric facility.  If that doesn't sound nuts and bad already, consider these passages from the Washington Post article which I find disturbing and chilling:  

For the first three months, according to several people familiar with the conditions, [the Hong Kong 12] were confined to these solitary cells, where two guards on shift took turns to watch them around-the-clock, even as they went to the bathroom. The lights were always on. During the day, they were forced to sit cross-legged on a concrete stool until their joints grew sore, except during mealtimes or interrogations. Walking around the cell was generally not permitted. At night, they were awakened at random hours, for no apparent reason. They were never allowed outside.

 

The interrogations were relentless during those initial months, the people familiar with the conditions said. Guards threatened to send them to Xinjiang — where the Chinese government has arbitrarily detained more than a million Muslim Uyghurs and subjected them to torture, forced sterilization, surveillance and other conditions, according to the United Nations — if they did not detail their attempted escape.

 

Most of the 12 were not physically abused, but seven people familiar with conditions at the center said screaming could “consistently” be heard coming from one cell: Li’s.

 

“It is likely that what [Li] faced inside was 10 times worse” than the rest, one person said.

If things were normal in Hong Kong, I think it would be safe to say that anything that Andy Li says at this point would be treated with suspicion as to its credibility.  Instead, the chance is extremely high that his words will be taken at surface value by the handpicked judges presiding over Jimmy Lai's trial.  And that in and of itself already will say a lot about whether justice can still truly be served, and served up, in Hong Kong in the national security law era.