Chloe is a Hong Konger and a former Bloomberg reporter who covered pivotal subjects, including prominent court proceedings, with a particular emphasis on cases tied to the Hong Kong unrest and the national security law.
The UK now officially has no parliament members until the general election in July. According to the latest election poll, the opposition party is leading, BBC reports. This is in stark contrast to the situation in the former British colony of Hong Kong.
In Hong Kong’s biggest national security law trial, 47 former pro-democracy lawmakers’ candidates were charged. Of these, 31 pleaded guilty over three years ago. The three judges (handpicked by China) convicted a further 14. Just two were acquitted last Thursday.
However, Hong Kong’s chief justice, who is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, appealed the acquittals just a few hours later. This means that they can be tried again; both are back under arrest for crimes of which they were acquitted. It seems that the objective is to maintain the 100 per cent conviction rate of the new national security law.
Three years ago, I reported on this case’s four-day bail hearings. All 47 opposition figures were charged with “conspiracy to subversion” over their different degrees of participation in unofficial primaries held in July 2020, which were an attempt to gain control in the upcoming city election.
The CCP is doing everything they can to stop people from remembering the Tiananmen massacre 35 years ago; lighting a candle or even writing numbers in the air will get you arrested. The degree of human rights violations in Hong Kong has reached a new high. Yet, countries still kowtowing to Beijing as it is the second biggest economy in the world.
Here in the UK, it is clear that this approach to elections is incomprehensible to those campaigning for parliamentary seats. Imagine if the outgoing government had banned or arrested opposition candidates.
The length of these hearings has been excruciating for all parties: defendants, their loved ones, counsels and journalists. It has been torturing to the point that the court finally adjourned at 2.30am after one of the defendants fainted in court on the first day on (1 March 2021). The judge issued a gagging order to prevent the reporting of the bail hearing.
There was a glimmer of hope that the defendants could spend more time with their loved ones before being locked up in jail simply for speaking out against the government controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). However, in the end, over 30 defendants had bail rejected and they were put behind bars, waiting for over 1,000 days.
According to the propaganda from the Hong Kong government, they claimed to uphold the rule of law and also that the judiciary are independent. Their judicial structure is a common law system adapted from the British colonial period, so the city is supposedly enjoying “one country, two systems”. Therefore, supposedly, Hong Kong should be entitled to special treatment internationally and have its own Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices (HKETO) worldwide.
The reality, though, is that the HKETO is a de facto intelligence office that operates to spy on Hong Kong and Chinese diasporas globally.
Every time a Western government issues a condemnation statement, the spokesperson of the CCP’s foreign affairs will always fight back, saying, “stop interfering our internal affairs”. It is crystal clear that Hong Kong is regarded by the CCP as any other city in China.
If this is the case, perhaps it is time to shut down all the HKETO around the world. Surely, the Chinese embassy is enough, is it not? There are over 700 cities in China. Do they all have their own economic and trade offices in the world?
The CCP’s infiltrations and penetration into our country is enormous. It ranges from the alleged spies in parliament, cyberattacks on our MPs, the Chinese-made drugs flooded on the street to harm our younger generation, to the brainwashing TikTok and the Hikvision surveillance system.
Then there is the genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, human rights violations in Tibet, dismantling of all aspects of freedom in Hong Kong, and the barbarian military activities near Taiwan. How much more evidence do we need to finally take some serious action?
All this raises a number of questions for the next British Government. How should we engage with China?
Of course, the UK trades with, and our government deals with, many governments with poor human rights records. But we must surely develop a foreign and trade policy that takes the actions of the Chinese government (at home, in Hong Kong and in our own country) explicitly into account.
Secondly, many in the Conservative Party are talking about withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (EHRC).
It is true that the current implementation of the EHRC is problematic. However, we believe that human rights are universal. They are not a matter of opinion that can vary from country to country and be jettisoned in, for example, China.
The Chinese government believes that we should not comment on its activities and human rights abuses as they are a domestic matter. Should we not be more open to the world and to finding ways to spread our vision of universal human rights?
While a new government is about to be formed, we must value the democracy and freedom we have now. We must defend it from intruders; we should not take freedom for granted; we must protect our fundamental values – and project them around the world. Before it’s too late.
