The breathtaking repression of speech and political dissent in Hong Kong

Professor David Law--a well-known comparative constitutional law and empirical legal studies scholar at the University of Virginia, who taught previously at the University of Hong Kong--gave permission to share these observations he posted on Facebook, which uses this article as a reference point; they make tangible and clear how bad things are now in Hong Kong:

The political crackdown in Hong Kong is so comprehensive and severe that it’s hard even to list what’s happened since Christmas. So instead here’s a list of the ways in which a law professor like me has personally felt its effects, over just this past week. Nothing abstract about it.

 

— A criminal defense lawyer pulls out of the Zoom conference I’m organizing for UVA to talk about the situation in Hong Kong after the “National Security” Law, citing concerns that Hong Kong’s longstanding independent bar is now in the cross hairs (now that the opposition parties, labor unions, and media have been crushed).

 

The sad thing is, I can’t blame him.  Now criminal defense lawyers in Hong Kong fear consequences just for doing their jobs, if they take on clients who expressed the wrong political views. Just like in mainland China.

 

— Citizen News shuts down for fear of prosecution for sedition. This was the outlet in which I published an essay mere months ago explaining what “separation of powers” is, why Hong Kong has (had) it, and why Chief Executive Carrie Lam was blatantly wrong to declare otherwise. (We are talking the kind of over-the-top butchering of basic concepts that would get you bottom of class and/or a flunking grade on a first-year law school exam. No safe space left for correcting rudimentary errors by government officials anymore, I guess?)

 

— HKU tore down the Tianenmen Square Massacre memorial in the dead of night behind walls so no one could see or document it — the same memorial that reminded me every day for 5 years, walking to and from my office, that I was free to speak my mind and do my job.

 

— And of course Stand News is shut down, and its officers / directors (even former ones) arrested, for “sedition,” a couple of days after publishing painstaking empirical investigative reporting with quantitative evidence of foot-dragging by the HK courts against pro-democracy defendants — in other words, the kind of empirical analysis that courts scholars like me do all the time. The entire organization is wiped from existence before I can even download the article. I taught a course on Courts at HKU for 5 years and would have wanted this on my syllabus as a local example of judicial behavior research that the students could relate to. So is that criminal sedition now?

 

It is a goal of the crackdown to destroy freedom of expression by silencing and intimidating anyone who dares to say that the government is destroying freedom of expression. That’s not just an irony. That’s the point.

 

It just feels so inadequate to be railing on Facebook against the dying of the light. Although even that has been squeezed - one of the main reasons I post so much, so publicly about Hong Kong is because local Hong Kong friends are now afraid to do so themselves and send me things to post. Big employers are telling employees (and even their family members) not to post or even “like” anything critical of the government on Facebook.