[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE DISMANTLING OF HONG KONG'S
CIVIL SOCIETY
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 12, 2022
__________
Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available at www.cecc.gov or www.govinfo.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
48-169 PDF WASHINGTON : 2023
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
Senate House
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon, Chair JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts,
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California Co-chair
MARCO RUBIO, Florida CHRISTOPHER SMITH, New Jersey
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma THOMAS SUOZZI, New York
TOM COTTON, Arkansas TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey
STEVE DAINES, Montana BRIAN MAST, Florida
ANGUS KING, Maine VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri
JON OSSOFF, Georgia RASHIDA TLAIB, Michigan
JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
MICHELLE STEEL, California
EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
Not yet appointed
Matt Squeri, Staff Director
Todd Stein, Deputy Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Statements
Page
Opening Statement of Hon. Jeff Merkley, a U.S. Senator from
Oregon; Chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on China..... 1
Statement of Hon. James P. McGovern, a U.S. Representative from
Massachusetts; Co-chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on
China.......................................................... 2
Statement of Hon. Chris Smith, a U.S. Representative from New
Jersey......................................................... 3
Statement of Patrick Poon, visiting researcher, Institute of
Comparative Law, Meiji University.............................. 6
Statement of Fermi Wong, founder and former executive director,
Unison......................................................... 9
Statement of Cheong Ching, veteran journalist.................... 11
Statement of Samuel Bickett, American lawyer and activist;
Fellow, Georgetown Center for Asian Law........................ 13
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements
Poon, Patrick.................................................... 31
Wong, Fermi...................................................... 32
Ching, Cheong.................................................... 35
Bickett, Samuel.................................................. 37
Merkley, Hon. Jeff............................................... 40
McGovern, Hon. James P........................................... 41
Submissions for the Record
List of journalists and press freedom defenders arrested in Hong
Kong, submitted by Senator Ossoff.............................. 43
CECC staff research report, ``Hong Kong Prosecutors Play a Key
Role in Carrying Out Political Prosecution''................... 45
CECC Truth in Testimony Disclosure Form.......................... 56
Witness Biographies.............................................. 57
(iii)
THE DISMANTLING OF HONG KONG'S
CIVIL SOCIETY
----------
TUESDAY, JULY 12, 2022
Congressional-Executive
Commission on China,
Washington, DC.
The hearing was held from 10:00 a.m. to 11:47 a.m., room
562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., and via
WebEx, Senator Jeff Merkley, Chair, Congressional-Executive
Commission on China, presiding.
Also present: Representative James P. McGovern, Co-chair,
Congressional-Executive Commission on China; Senator Jon Ossoff
and Representative Chris Smith.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF MERKLEY, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
OREGON; CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
Chair Merkley. Good morning. Today's hearing of the
Congressional-Executive Commission on China entitled ``The
Dismantling of Hong Kong's Civil Society'' will come to order.
Earlier this month, Hong Kong marked the 25th anniversary
of the British handover to the People's Republic of China.
Instead of celebrating the high degree of autonomy and
universal suffrage promised to the people of Hong Kong, this
anniversary served as an occasion for Chinese leader Xi Jinping
to go to Hong Kong and flaunt the control he now wields over
the city. It's now been two years since implementation of Hong
Kong's draconian National Security Law.
In these two years, authorities completed the
transformation of Hong Kong from an open society into a city
gripped by fear--fear of the mainland's authoritarian
repression. A city that once boasted a vibrant civil society
and pro-democratic institutions saw these pillars of what made
Hong Kong so special systematically dismantled. The Hong Kong
government now jails protesters and politicians, shuts down
independent media, and silences critics, even criminalizing
dissent.
At least 10,500 Hong Kongers have been arrested for
political and protest-related offenses. No fewer than 123
individuals face national security charges and will likely be
tried with few or no due process protections and with possible
extradition to mainland China. At least 65 civil society
organizations have shut down or left Hong Kong for fear of
prosecution under the National Security Law. Today, sadly, that
once-vibrant civil society is crushed, muted, and scattered.
Today's hearing offers a microcosm of what's happened and
what remains. Our witnesses bring a deep history in civil
society in Hong Kong, as well as experience being persecuted
and having to continue their work in exile, in Tokyo, in
London, in Los Angeles, and here in Washington, DC. Like so
many, they continue to fight for the people of Hong Kong and
its once-proud institutions.
In recent months, this Commission has heard from dozens of
Hong Kong's true patriots: journalists, human rights advocates,
students, former legislators, social workers, and religious
clergy, nongovernmental organization staff, doctors, nurses,
lawyers, teachers, and trade union organizers. In the coming
days, we will release a report on what those members of civil
society have experienced, largely in their own words. Today's
hearing offers a glimpse into that bleak picture. The Chinese
government's policy of crushing resistance turns Hong Kong into
a city subject to centralized political control, like other
cities in China. The civil society voices we've heard from view
authorities as co-opting those who can be bought, constraining
those who can be intimidated, and cracking down on those who
cannot be silenced.
As we hear some of those stories today, I look forward to
learning from our witnesses what we can do to support the civil
society that remains in Hong Kong and organizations that now
operate elsewhere on behalf of the people of Hong Kong. I look
forward to exploring with the Biden administration additional
steps that can be taken to hold accountable those responsible
for undermining Hong Kong's autonomy, basic rights, and rule of
law.
Later today, the Commission will release a report--a staff
analysis--on the role of Hong Kong's prosecutors in these
abuses. We hope that this analysis, like the work we do
documenting political prisoner cases generally, will shine a
light in a dark place and point to a better path ahead. Without
objection, these supplementary materials will be entered into
the record.
I now recognize Congressman McGovern for his opening
remarks.
STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
MASSACHUSETTS; CO-CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON
CHINA
Co-chair McGovern. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
holding this hearing on the erosion of civil society in Hong
Kong. Hong Kong has long been a particular interest of this
Commission. From the start, 20 years ago, our annual report has
included a discrete Hong Kong chapter. This is the sixth
hearing on Hong Kong, or featuring a witness on Hong Kong, in
my three and a half years as House co-chair. The reason for
this heightened attention is regrettable, however.
The changes during this time have been dramatic. Three
years ago this summer, the world witnessed massive protests in
the streets of Hong Kong. The trigger was an extradition treaty
that put residents at risk of being forcibly sent to the
mainland. The context was the steady erosion of democratic
norms under Chinese government and Communist Party influence.
For our September 2019 hearing on the protests, witnesses flew
in from Hong Kong. They would not be able to do that today.
One witness was Joshua Wong, a leader of the pro-democracy
movement, making his second appearance before the CECC. Today
he is in prison on political charges. Another was Denise Ho, a
democracy activist and singer. She was arrested and released on
bail and still faces charges of the crime of supporting
democracy. In 2020, the central government passed the National
Security Law, providing a ``legal'' basis for political
persecution of those deemed oppositional to the Party's
priorities.
Further, Hong Kong authorities have imposed measures
aligned with the ideological priorities of the central
government. These include removing books from libraries,
pushing patriotic education in schools, revising history to
suit party narratives, and suppressing LGBTQ voices. These
impulses are not exclusive to Hong Kong or China. We see such
evidence of authoritarianism creep in in many places at home
and abroad.
Today we hear from citizens and residents of Hong Kong who
have been firsthand witnesses to this extraordinary change. The
fact that none of our witnesses remains in Hong Kong is
indicative of the crackdown. We invite them to share their
stories and to speak for their friends and colleagues still in
Hong Kong who are not able to speak for themselves. We not only
want to hear about the state of civil society, but to receive
recommendations, as the chairman said, on what U.S.
policymakers can do to support those who still desire democracy
and human rights.
I also welcome your recommendations on whether the U.S.
should create humanitarian pathways for those fleeing
repression in Hong Kong. Lastly, let us not forget the
prisoners of conscience who are in jail or on trial in Hong
Kong--Joshua Wong, Jimmy Lai, Cyd Ho, Claudia Mo, and so many
others. We continue to stand with them and to advocate for
their release.
Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know the staff is working
on analytical products in conjunction with this hearing, and I
look forward to their publication. I look forward to the
testimony today. I yield back.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Co-chair McGovern.
Congressman Smith, do you wish to make any opening
comments?
STATEMENT OF HON. CHRIS SMITH,
A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY
Representative Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for organizing
this very important hearing on the very disturbing dismantling
of civil society in Hong Kong that we see taking place right
before our very eyes. Last October, I had convened a hearing at
the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, which I co-chair with
my good friend and colleague Jim McGovern, on the state of
civil and political rights in Hong Kong. What we heard then
with regard to the erosion of civil and political rights was
deeply concerning, but as much as the danger signs were all
flashing red some nine months ago, the situation has only
gotten worse since then, as we shall hear from our witnesses.
While this deterioration has impacted civil society
organizations across the board, I want to focus on one aspect
of civil society that until very recently has been very
vibrant, namely, the faith-based sector and parochial education
provided principally by Catholic schools. Indeed, though
estimated as constituting only 5 percent of the overall
population, the Catholic imprint on Hong Kong's elites has been
quite profound. One thinks of the great democracy advocate and
lawyer Martin Lee, whose faith motivated his commitment to
democracy and the rule of law, Albert Ho, former chairman of
the democratic party, and Anson Chan, the former chief
secretary who pushed for direct democracy for Hong Kong.
Or Jimmy Lai, the billionaire who founded the Giordano
clothing and retail emporium, as well as founded and financed
the fiercely independent Apple Daily, which was shut down by
the government in June of last year. Jimmy, a convert to
Catholicism, was arrested and charged with crimes under the
draconian National Security Law, which was enacted in 2020 at
the behest of the Chinese Communist Party. Jimmy remains in
jail, but he is a man of faith who easily could have fled to
safety like the roughly 90,000 citizens who left Hong Kong
between June 2020 and June 2021, because he is or was a rich
man. Yet Jimmy stayed in Hong Kong to stand with those who
spoke for freedom. Such a heroic man.
Towering above all is Cardinal Zen, who for years has been
warning about Communist China's efforts to control the church,
in particular its Catholic schools, as well as education in
general. The church resisted efforts in 2012 to impose
propagandistic citizen education using mainland-approved
textbooks in Catholic schools, which was a mere 10 years ago.
Fast-forward to today, however, and the teachers are being
purged from schools at all different levels in Hong Kong, not
only Catholic ones. The cardinal has been a thorn in the side
of Beijing, as well as those in Hong Kong who sought to do the
Chinese Communist Party's bidding.
Thus, one perhaps should not be surprised that at the
beginning of this year a series of four articles appeared in Ta
Kung Pao, a newspaper owned by the Chinese government via its
liaison office in Hong Kong, attacking the cardinal. They
ominously liken him to practitioners of Falun Gong, whose
adherents are horribly persecuted in mainland China, while also
calling for greater curtailment of religious liberty.
Then at 90 years of age, the next shoe dropped. The
cardinal was arrested in May of this year and charged under the
National Security Law. His offenses included subversion, in
other words supporting democracy protesters, and collusion with
foreign organizations. The latter is especially chilling when
one considers how in communist China the Catholic Church was
deemed a foreign power, with Chinese Catholics on the mainland
forced to either join a patriot church or go underground.
Yet these heroic individuals aren't the only prominent
Catholics in Hong Kong. Both former chief executive Carrie Lam
and current executive John Lee, who previously served as
secretary of security, identify as Catholics and went to
Catholic schools. These are the two individuals most closely
associated with implementing Beijing's policy mandates and
enforcing the National Security Law, leading to the dismantling
of Hong Kong's civil society. Indeed, just the other day the
Holy See's envoy and unofficial representative in Hong Kong,
Monsignor Javier Herrera Corona, warned Hong Kong Catholics
that the freedoms they have enjoyed in the past are now fast
disappearing and cautioned missionaries that Hong Kong is ``not
the great Catholic beachhead it was.''
What is so frustrating about this is all the signals that
were missed here in Washington, indeed here in Congress as
well, leading up to this. I first introduced the Hong Kong
Human Rights and Democracy Act in 2014. It was the time of the
Umbrella Movement, which began in response to a decision by the
Standing Committee of the PRC's National People's Congress to
pre-screen candidates for Hong Kong's chief executive position,
effectively excluding those Beijing deemed unreliable.
A new generation of democracy leaders, as we all know,
emerged, including great student leaders like Joshua Wong and
Nathan Law. International observers and the foreign media
cheered these advocates, as did we, and there was a sense of
optimism and enthusiasm. Perhaps because of that optimism at
the time it was hard to get our congressional colleagues to see
clearly the gathering threat to Hong Kong's democracy and civil
and political rights. Our bill had only five co-sponsors that
year, including now-Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
As I have noted in the past, many believed that Hong Kong,
with its greater freedom and free trade principles, could help
turn and tug the People's Republic of China in a liberalizing
fashion. Hong Kong's Basic Law was a mini constitution that
some believed could serve as a model for expanding respect for
the rule of law in China one day. Such hope, sadly, proved
illusory. In March of 2019, the Hong Kong government proposed
extraditing alleged criminals to China, raising fears that
political dissidents could be sent to mainland China to face
charges over exercising basic freedoms.
Hong Kong's government, using an increasingly aggressive
police force, began to resemble that of mainland China in
responding to legitimate protests, speech, and peaceable
assembly. Congress too awakened to the changed situation and
with now 47 co-sponsors, and under the leadership of Speaker
Pelosi, our Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act passed the
House, with Lantos Commission co-chair Jim McGovern, I'm happy
to say, as the lead Democrat. Indeed, that same day, Jim's bill
placing restrictions on tear gas exports and crowd-control
technology to Hong Kong also passed, with me as the lead
Republican co-sponsor.
When the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act was
enacted into law, the Trump administration declared that Hong
Kong was no longer ``sufficiently autonomous'' to warrant being
treated as being independent of China for trade and technology
export purposes, and further sanctioned key individuals in the
Hong Kong government, including Carrie Lam. While we could
point to this as a victory, with Republicans and Democrats
united, frankly speaking we all know it was a case of too
little and too late--certainly too late to help save democracy
and civil society in Hong Kong.
Thus, here we are, no longer at a crossroads but further
down the wrong road. Where we go from here depends in part on
whether the world is paying attention, and especially whether
we here are paying attention, which is why this hearing today
is so important. To Martin Lee, Albert Ho, Cardinal Zen, Jimmy
Lai, and Joshua Wong, and all of those who have been unjustly
arrested or imprisoned, please know--please know you are not
forgotten. With that, I look forward to hearing from our very
distinguished witnesses. I yield back.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Congressman.
I'd now like to introduce our panel of witnesses.
Patrick Poon is a visiting researcher at the Institute for
Comparative Law at Meiji University in Tokyo. He is advisor to
the 29 Principles, a United Kingdom-based organization
supporting lawyers facing oppression. In his years in Hong
Kong, he served as a court reporter for the South China Morning
Post, China Labour Bulletin, the China Human Rights Lawyers
Concern Group, the Independent Chinese PEN Center, and Amnesty
International.
Fermi Wong is founder and former executive director of Hong
Kong Unison, a group that promotes equality for ethnic
minorities. Her work running a civil society organization in
Hong Kong has been featured in Time magazine, the South China
Morning Post Magazine, and Hong Kong Free Press. Now in the
United Kingdom, she seeks to promote Hong Kong civil society
abroad.
Ching Cheong is a veteran journalist who worked for the
state-owned Wen Wei Po newspaper for 15 years, acquiring
knowledge of the Chinese Communist Party's interference in Hong
Kong affairs. He is featured in a recent Economist article
titled, ``How a Free and Open Hong Kong Became a Police
State.'' Before he left Hong Kong, he was involved with
independent media and journalist organizations. He joins us
from Los Angeles this morning.
Samuel Bickett is a human rights lawyer focused on the rule
of law and civil liberties in Hong Kong, and a fellow at the
Georgetown Center for Asian Law. He was a corporate sanctions/
corporate corruption lawyer based in Hong Kong from 2013 to
2021. He was arrested during the 2019 protests and convicted,
imprisoned twice, and then deported from Hong Kong earlier this
year.
Thank you all for joining us to bring your stories, your
knowledge, and your expertise. We look forward to your
testimony. We will begin with Patrick Poon, who's joining us
from Tokyo.
STATEMENT OF PATRICK POON, VISITING RESEARCHER, INSTITUTE OF
COMPARATIVE LAW, MEIJI UNIVERSITY
Mr. Poon. I would like to thank the CECC and the
distinguished audience for giving me this opportunity to share
my experience and my views on the situation of civil society in
Hong Kong. I'll focus on the drastic change of civil society
space from the time I changed my job as a journalist to become
an NGO worker with local and international NGOs since the early
2000s to the era of red net, as I would describe it, after the
National Security Law was imposed on Hong Kong by the Chinese
authorities.
``Red line'' is simply not enough to describe the scope.
The Hong Kong and Chinese governments wouldn't even make clear
where the red line is, so they can arbitrarily restrict Hong
Kong people's freedoms. The message is clear--you can only
survive if you don't challenge the government. When I started
my NGO career focusing on supporting workers, writers, and
lawyers in mainland China, the civil society was very vibrant.
We could organize all kinds of activities, ranging from staging
demonstrations to call for the release of detained dissidents
in China to arranging for writers and lawyers to meet with
their counterparts in Hong Kong. We never experienced any
interference or felt any threats.
Even when I was an Amnesty researcher, I wouldn't fear too
much for my personal safety when I commented on the detention
of Chinese dissidents or when I worked on documenting Uyghur
and Kazakh cases in relation to the political reeducation
camps. I still remember how a mainland Chinese writer once
exclaimed when he arrived in Hong Kong, when I met him at the
train station. He said, I could finally breathe the air of
freedom. It was a time when many young university graduates in
Hong Kong were willing to take a relatively low salary to work
on issues so that we could do something to help our friends in
China.
During that time, I was able to communicate with many high-
profile mainland Chinese dissidents without fear. Late Nobel
Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo had so much hope for Hong
Kong's support that he contacted me and several others in Hong
Kong in late 2008 to invite prominent pro-democracy figures in
Hong Kong to co-sign Charter 08. Many of those democratic
figures, some of them now in prison, and myself, were among the
first batch of co-signatories. We didn't need to think much
when we decided to co-sign it.
These experiences led me to continue my work at
international NGOs like Amnesty as I believed that it is
significant to push China to comply with its international
obligations. It was unimaginable at that time that Hong Kong's
freedom of expression and freedom of assembly would be
completely gone. Even prayer meetings or masses to commemorate
the victims of the Tiananmen massacre are now deemed too
sensitive. For NGOs in Hong Kong, we used to feel secure to
organize talks on Hong Kong issues in China and Hong Kong,
whether public or closed door, with universities in Hong Kong.
We didn't need to worry too much about our personal safety
compared with activists in mainland China.
But now everyone needs to have second thoughts or self-
censor the content of the events before planning such
activities. We used to be able to organize public talks by
inviting human rights lawyers from China to share their
experiences with the general public. Now it's just unimaginable
that similar activities could be done anymore in Hong Kong. We
used to be able to hold public rallies, from small-scale
demonstrations outside China's Central Government Liaison
Office calling for the release of detained Chinese dissidents
to mass rallies calling for universal suffrage in Hong Kong,
without any interference.
Police officers at that time were friendly and would even
engage in discussing the route with the organizers. The police
made it very clear to us that we didn't need to get their
permission to hold any rallies. We only needed to inform them
and they would routinely issue a letter of no objection, only
formalities, despite the Public Order Ordinance (that has been
repeatedly criticized by UN human rights experts as restrictive
of freedom of assembly). Sometimes the police would even call
us to confirm that we would be organizing a demonstration if we
forgot to inform them in advance.
However, after the anti-extradition bill protests in 2019
and the imposition of the NSL in 2020, the situation has
completely changed. Anybody appearing in places like Victoria
Park, where the annual candlelight vigil to commemorate the
Tiananmen massacre used to take place on June 4th would be
questioned by the police and warned that they would be charged
with illegal assembly if they stayed there. Like many Hong
Kongers, I honestly didn't believe that unionist Lee Cheuk-yan,
solicitor and former legislator Albert Ho, and barrister Chow
Hang-tung, leaders of the now disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in
Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China which
organized the annual candlelight vigil, would be accused of
inciting an unauthorized assembly for an assembly that had been
allowed for over 30 years. They are now even facing the same
notorious charge of inciting subversion of state power, like
many Chinese activists.
Finally, I would also like to share a bit about my
experience as a former court reporter, as I'm puzzled at how
difficult it is to cover court news in Hong Kong nowadays. I
covered quite a lot of trials about protesters being accused of
obstruction in a public place for staging small-scale protests
that occupied some space, such as outside China's Central
Government Liaison Office. Those were big news in those days.
The sentences the protesters faced at that time were about a
few weeks. Granting bail was considered normal. I never heard
any judge at that time say that they didn't trust that the
defendants would commit the said offense during bail.
Presumption of innocence was well observed. Reporters
wouldn't feel any restrictions on reporting anything in open
trials, except for knowing that we shouldn't disclose the facts
for cases that would be committed to be tried at the high
court. Now everything has changed. Even reporting details about
bail application is banned by the courts in Hong Kong. Judges
rarely consider public interest when they make judgments. I
appreciate that there have been some efforts to pressure the
Hong Kong and Chinese governments. However, the situation won't
change if the Hong Kong and Chinese governments can't see the
real consequences. We shouldn't give them the impression of
business as usual as they are cracking down on our civil
society.
While various governments have issued statements expressing
concern about the erosion of human rights in Hong Kong, it's
difficult to see any real impacts as the Chinese and Hong Kong
governments have realized that they can continue doing business
despite severe criticism of human rights records. Authoritarian
regimes like China and their supporters have learned that they
can divert attention of all criticism on human rights by
pointing out that there are also serious human rights
violations in democratic countries.
However, checks and balances is what democracies should
emphasize distinguishes them from tyrannies. Democratic
governments should make the business community realize that
there are real consequences for colluding with dictatorships.
Combining the effort of pushing China and Hong Kong to comply
with international human rights standards, and economic
sanctions on senior government officials, would be the most
effective and mutually beneficial way to ensure accountability.
Otherwise, democracies will eventually succumb to authoritarian
propaganda, which nobody would want to see. Therefore, I would
urge the U.S. Government to impose further sanctions on all
senior government officials in Hong Kong and China. Thank you.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Mr. Poon. Your
description of an individual coming to Hong Kong and saying, I
could finally breathe the air of freedom, is certainly a
description of an event that can no longer take place in any
shape or form. I really appreciate your testimony.
We are now going to turn to Ms. Wong. Ms. Wong is joining
us from the United Kingdom.
STATEMENT OF FERMI WONG, FOUNDER AND FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
UNISON
Ms. Wong. Dear Mr. Chair, Co-chair, and other
commissioners, thank you very much for holding this hearing. It
really means a lot for us. I got a little emotional when Mr.
Chris Smith mentioned those names. They all are my dear
friends. I miss them a lot, and I can't see them in Hong Kong
anymore.
I was born in China and spent my whole childhood there. It
was in Hong Kong that I experienced awakening to the universal
values of freedom, equality, social justice, and individual
rights. I have spent almost my entire adult life in civil
society and my main focus is fighting for equality for ethnic
minorities in Hong Kong, especially those of South Asian origin
like the Nepalese, Indians, and Pakistanis. I also joined the
democracy movement, fighting for universal suffrage in Hong
Kong.
Hong Kong used to be the capital of protests for good
reasons. First, the Hong Kong government was not democratic and
not so responsive. After the handover, the formulation of
government policies was very bad. We learned that it was only
when issues were taken to the streets that officials might
respond. Second, because there were independent media, and they
did a very good job, that helped to put pressure on the
government and draw public attention and concern. The third
reason is we Hong Kongers now have very high awareness of our
freedom of assembly and speech, so we use protests and marches,
and petitioned to defend our individual rights.
The last reason was there was a huge gap between rights
promised and rights delivered. The Basic Law Article 39
provides for human rights protections as guaranteed by the Hong
Kong Bill of Rights, the ICCPR, and the ICESCR. And also, we do
have four pieces of equal opportunities laws, namely a
disability discrimination ordinance, a race discrimination
ordinance, and a sex discrimination ordinance, and a family
status discrimination ordinance. However, the National Security
Law has taken away all these rights. We say the civil society
in Hong Kong is dead now, no more.
When I first read the National Security Law, I was very
naive. I thought that the crimes of secession, sedition,
terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces should be of no
concern to my work fighting for equality for minorities. But
then I noticed that the National Security Law instructs the
Hong Kong government to ``strengthen propaganda, guidance,
supervision, and administration'' over ``schools, social
groups, media, and the internet.'' Soon I realized that the
National Security Law meant a total crackdown on civil society.
In Hong Kong, many non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
that provide social services for people who are in need, almost
100 percent receive funding from the government. So after the
handover, and also our amendment on funding mode, that means
all NGOs need to sign a Funding and Service Agreement (FSA)
with the government every three years, and that created very
serious self-censorship. Now no more social service agencies
are criticizing government policies. We have another setup if
you want to criticize or challenge unfair policies and unjust
systems--we would go to the civil societies or we set up our
own civil societies. I must let you know that in Hong Kong,
civil society is entirely separate and different from NGOs.
For social services now, completely silenced. Just recently
we had an amendment to our professional social workers
ordinance that anyone who violates the National Security Law
would be deregistered and their license would be taken away
forever. Then the Labor Bureau is organizing study groups on
the speech that Xi Jinping gave on the 25th anniversary of the
handover. This is very important--the Labor Bureau or the
government officials, they count who is present and who is
absent. What does that mean? It means that if you are present,
you are loyal enough and it will be easy for you to get
government funding. Now only those NGOs that are seen as
patriotic can get funding. If those NGOs don't really cooperate
with government policy or join the study groups, I'm afraid
it's very difficult for them to survive. This is the case in
the social work profession and also the NGOs in Hong Kong. I
would like to talk about civil society.
I first joined the Civil Human Rights Front back in 2002.
Back when it was set up I joined it, when I was advocating for
legislation against racial discrimination. I really relied on
civil society, the joint effort to pressure the government. For
example, because there was very poor education policy for
ethnic minorities, especially those from the working class. I
need to cooperate with the Professional Teachers' Union, and
now it has been shut down, no more. Then all the Pakistanis,
Nepalese, Indians, the working class, you know, they do not
enjoy equal wages. They were discriminated against in the
workplace. We need trade unions. I always went to Lee Cheuk
Yan, CTU, Confederation of Trade Unions. Now it's shut down and
Lee Cheuk Yan is in jail.
I needed to rely on some different civil societies; the
Civil Human Rights Fund now is also gone. No more. And then
another issue is, before, I used to join the civil societies
delegations to lobby at the UN, because Hong Kong has signed a
lot of human rights conventions and covenants. We did not
really worry and weren't afraid of being prosecuted. But now
this time just last week, at the hearing on the CCPR, on the
China report, you saw the committee members needed to ask the
Hong Kong official delegations whether they could guarantee no
Hong Kong civil societies would be prosecuted when they return
to Hong Kong.
It is a very different story now. If I try to criticize any
government policies for the media-- of course now I doubt any
media would report on it. But if they had, I might be accused
of inciting hatred toward the government, and then it's also
violating the National Security Law. I just want to tell you
that for the civil societies in Hong Kong, it's very difficult
to survive. We could only rely on public donations during the
mass rallies, or crowd funding, but now we can't do it because
you would be accused of money laundering. Then if we try to go
to local corporate or local private family foundations, you
can't because no one will support you because they dare not
upset the government.
Then if you receive any funding from overseas, that means
you are colluding with foreign forces. Now we are stuck. We
don't have any way out at all. So, Mr. Chair and dear
commissioners, I would like you to continue to pay attention to
the Hong Kong situation. Then maybe please join hand in hand
with democratic countries to defend human rights and democracy
for the world and put aside those very short-term interests of
doing business with China. Thank you very much.
Chair Merkley. Thank you, Ms. Wong. I appreciate your focus
on many aspects of social media and also on the role of the
media.
Speaking of the role of the media, that's a good transition
to our next panelist, Ching Cheong. Ching Cheong is joining us
from Los Angeles. Mr. Ching.
STATEMENT OF CHING CHEONG, VETERAN JOURNALIST
Mr. Ching. At the time when Beijing began to draft the
Basic Law, Beijing reminded the law drafters that post-1997
Hong Kong should only be an economic city and not a political
one, which suggested that the thriving civil society might be
curtailed. The Chinese Communist Party was worried that civil
society organizations might be used as vehicles for the
infiltration of Western influence to subvert this one-party
dictatorship.
In the early 1990s, I gained access to a report by the
National Security Ministry which identified five social groups
that might be potentially dangerous to the CCP. These included
journalists, religious leaders, lawyers, educators, and social
workers. In 2003 Beijing mapped out a detailed plan aimed at
suppressing these five groups. It compiled a database of the
prominent figures in each of these sectors and classified them
according to their political attitude toward the CCP--either as
friendly, neutral, or animus--and developed different united
front strategies for them, either to co-opt or eliminate them.
It set up also a psychological warfare department to discredit
those who were considered as not friendly.
Beginning in 2003, the CCP took several important measures
to abrogate its Basic Law commitments. All these measures were
aimed at imposing the CCP's will on Hong Kong and gradually
convert Hong Kong from a free society to an authoritarian one.
Such efforts culminated in the enactment of the draconian
National Security Law in 2020, which ultimately destroyed Hong
Kong's civil society. Within the first year of its enactment,
more than 60 civil society organizations were disbanded.
Now I'll focus on the media sector. Before 1997, Hong
Kong's media market was characterized by its plurality and
diversity in its editorial lines. At those times, most of them
were Taiwan-friendly. To reverse this situation, the CCP
started a massive united front strategy, trying to convert the
political stance of these newspapers. At that time, the number
one man in Hong Kong, Mr. Xu Jiatun, began to adopt a friendly
approach by wining and dining newspaper owners and executives.
The most successful case has been Sing Tao Daily and Ming Pao,
which used to be against China taking back Hong Kong.
Other means to transform the Hong Kong media included
outright acquisitions of shares of major news outlets by pro-
China business tycoons, like the South China Morning Post, Ming
Pao, and the TVB. Such acquisitions resulted in obvious changes
in their respective editorial policies. By 2014, the remaining
mainstream news outlets that were still critical of the CCP and
supportive of the democracy movement were Jimmy Lai's Next
Magazine and Apple Daily, together with a few web-based media
such as Stand News and Citizen News.
The enactment of the National Security Law gave the
authorities wide-sweeping power to shutter all the remaining
pro-democracy news outlets, with Apple Daily and Stand News
bearing the full brunt. The chilling effect was obvious. The
FCC voluntarily suspended its annual Human Rights Press Awards,
citing the elusive red line in the National Security Law. The
Hong Kong Journalists Association lowered the threshold for
dissolution in anticipation of the pressure to disband itself.
The Independent Commentators Association, which I was
instrumental in setting up, set up to safeguard media freedom,
went into silent voluntary dissolution. To avoid the ax, the
editorial policies of news outlets had to toe Beijing's line.
The obvious example is to call the Russian invasion of Ukraine
a ``special military operation'' instead of an invasion and
churn out commentaries that blame the U.S. for precipitating
the Russian invasion.
Now, I want to turn to the lessons for the world. In a
short span of 25 years, a once-free society soon degenerated
into an authoritarian one. For over a century, Hong Kong had
served as the haven for the political dissidents from China;
now it has become the exporter of political refugees itself.
Once prized as the freest place in the Chinese-speaking world,
Hong Kong experienced unprecedented curtailment of freedom of
speech and expression. The pearl of the Orient, a highly
successful crossbreed of East and West civilizations, began to
lose its luster, and it is an irreparable loss to the whole
world.
Thus Hong Kong provides a classic example of how, in time
of peace, a free society based on the rule of law is being
converted into an authoritarian one in which law itself becomes
a tool of political repression. The world should learn from
Hong Kong's tragic experience and draw important lessons
therefrom to avoid begetting the same fate. What alarms me is
that the tactics the CCP used to convert Hong Kong are being
applied in Western democracies as well. These familiar tactics
include propaganda, united front strategy, party-building
mechanisms, infiltration, and intelligence, to name the most
obvious ones.
All these tactics are clearly at work in the West now.
Hence, the dreadful experience of Hong Kong provides a wake-up
call for the whole world. Caring about Hong Kong is not just
for Hong Kong's own sake, but for the sake of the whole world.
Since we witnessed first hand how the fundamental pillars of a
free society can be easily destroyed by the CCP, we feel duty
bound to explicitly state the obvious danger.
So I come to my policy recommendations, one for Hong Kong
and one for the U.S. On Hong Kong, we hope Congress will pass
the provisions in Section 30303, the Hong Kong Freedom and
Choice provisions, and other Hong Kong-focused measures in H.R.
5421 as soon as possible. For the U.S., I hope Congress will
try to proactively step up the surveillance of CCP-related
activities in the U.S. Under the framework of the CECC, I think
it should find out ways to combat or reverse the appeasement
sentiments toward the CCP, which is, I found, quite rampant in
the U.S. Thank you for giving me this chance to express my
ideas.
Chair Merkley. Well, thank you, Mr. Ching.
Our fourth witness is able to join us here in Washington,
DC. We see how scattered our witnesses are--Japan, Los Angeles,
the United Kingdom. We're glad to have Mr. Bickett here in
person to share his story and his experience as a human rights
lawyer, which bears so directly on the challenges faced in Hong
Kong. Welcome, Mr. Bickett.
STATEMENT OF SAMUEL BICKETT, AMERICAN LAWYER AND ACTIVIST;
FELLOW, GEORGETOWN CENTER FOR ASIAN LAW
Mr. Bickett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to
testify today. The Hong Kong justice system has been corrupted
by Beijing's repressive security apparatus. If a case is of
political interest to Beijing, a defendant has little hope of
receiving a fair trial. Compared to the National Security Law,
little is said about the deterioration of traditional common
law courts, but the vast majority of political prisoners were
charged under laws on the books for decades, which have been
twisted to suit Beijing's current purposes.
High-profile political defendants wrongly charged in these
courts face an impossibly rigged system. Many ordinary judges
have been willing participants in dismantling the rule of law.
The burden of proof has been turned on its head. Rather than
requiring the prosecution to prove its case, judges often
declare that defendants haven't sufficiently proved their
innocence, and judges regularly ignore or even falsify
exculpatory evidence to reach a guilty verdict.
Judges who follow the law are punished. When Beijing
attacked several judges who acquitted protesters in 2020, the
judiciary's leadership removed them. State media harassed one
judge so severely that in 2021 he abruptly resigned and moved
with his family to the U.K. Similar purges have taken place in
the DOJ and police. The message to civil servants has been
clear: Get in line or suffer the consequences.
Private lawyers are next. The Law Society and Bar
Association recently launched investigations into dozens of
lawyers for their work representing protesters. Many human
rights lawyers have already been harassed out of town. One
judge has even suggested lawyers offering services to
protesters may be criminally liable as accomplices. While
others have gone through much worse, including many that the
commissioners spoke of earlier, my own experience illustrates
how deeply corrupted the process has become.
In December 2019, I came across two men in an MTR station
in Hong Kong beating and choking a teenager with a baton. As
cellphones recorded the incident, they denied that they were
police officers. I grabbed the baton, stopped the attacks, and
detained one of the men until the police came. But the police
claimed then that the man, Yu Shu Sang, was actually a police
officer. Yu admitted to the police that he had not only lied
about being a police officer, but that he had also falsely
accused the teenager of a crime he didn't commit. All of this
was caught on video. Nonetheless, the police arrested me and
let the attackers go free.
At the police station, I underwent a common interrogation
method in Hong Kong. They put me in a room with the temperature
set at around 35 degrees Fahrenheit for hours at a time,
periodically taking me out for interrogation, before putting me
back into the near-frozen room. I spent two days in custody
before getting bail. The DOJ is required by law to act
independently, but in political cases it is the police calling
the shots. The first prosecutor in my case told us that the
police pressured her bosses to pursue the charges because I was
a foreigner who had ``embarrassed the police'' on camera. She
was soon replaced.
After that, at every court hearing, two police officers sat
behind the new prosecutor, Memi Ng, and instructed her. This
scene, police officers literally whispering into the ear of
prosecutors, is now common in court in almost every political
case. At my May 2021 trial, we showed exculpatory videos, and
police officers openly admitted to lying repeatedly, destroying
evidence, and witness tampering. Magistrate Arthur Lam simply
disregarded all of this and outright invented a new set of
facts, unconcerned about how this conduct would look to
observers. This has also become very common. In these common
law cases, non-NSL cases, we see it all the time, and it's not
talked about enough.
He then sentenced me to four and a half months in prison.
After nearly two months behind bars, I was released on bail so
that I could appeal. The court assigned the case to a notorious
National Security judge, Esther Toh. Judge assignments are
supposed to be random, but they no longer are. High-profile
political cases almost always go to a small circle of the most
virulently pro-Beijing judges. Again, I'm not talking about
National Security cases, which of course do. These are regular
common law cases. Judge Toh of course upheld my conviction and
sent me back to prison for the rest of my sentence.
There's much that the U.S. and its allies can do to
increase the cost of Hong Kong's crackdown. I'm just going to
address three of those proposed actions today, all of which
would protect American interests as well. First, existing
sanctions are nowhere close to sufficient as a deterrent. I
urge Congress and the White House specifically to issue
sanctions against mid-level prosecutors and police officers,
casting the net wide and low enough to send a message to the
civil service's rank and file: If they continue to infringe on
defendants' rights, there will be consequences.
Additionally, I urge Congress to finally provide a special
immigration pathway for Hong Kongers to live and work in the
United States and eventually obtain citizenship. Those now
fleeing Hong Kong will make exceptional contributions wherever
they land. It is America's loss, and frankly America's shame,
that the country is not doing more to attract them here.
Passing the America COMPETES Act with the Hong Kong refugee
provisions intact would be a good first step.
Finally, many American companies continue to fund China's
abuses through massive foreign investment. A law in the mold of
the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that prohibits U.S. persons
from facilitating serious human rights abuses could be a game
changer. Any such law must also permit private actions against
offenders, allowing much of the enforcement effort to be
undertaken by private plaintiffs and holding companies
accountable for what they're doing in Hong Kong and China.
I'm out of time and I'll stop there. Thank you for your
attention.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Mr. Bickett, for
sharing your experience as a human rights lawyer, but also as
just an individual who intervened to assist somebody who was
being beaten up, and then saw the entire episode changed, in
kind of a Kafkaesque fashion, such that you became the criminal
rather than the savior, and not just suffered time in prison
but under a form of freezing air torture, if you will. We
appreciate that you're here now, able to share your experiences
freely, and to suggest ways that the U.S. can be more
aggressive.
We're going to turn to our periods of questioning now,
seven minutes. I'll ask each person to try to confine
themselves to that time commitment. To our witnesses, try to be
fairly crisp in your responses so we can get through as many
questions as possible.
I'll start with Ms. Wong. What you described in Hong Kong
bears close resemblance to what we know about mainland China.
Officials tolerating some social welfare organizations, as long
as they strictly self-censor themselves, while treating those
advocating for citizens' participation in governance much more
harshly, leaving little space for human rights lawyers, or
independent journalists, or women's or LGBTQ rights
organizations, or labor organizers, or religious organizations,
not to mention foreign NGOs.
Is this how you see things? That the control of civil
society in Hong Kong now closely resembles what we have seen in
mainland China?
Ms. Wong. Yes. We see in all their strategy suppression of
the NGOs in China, and now it's happening in Hong Kong.
Chair Merkley. Thank you. You're in exile. How do Hong
Kongers in exile preserve the spirit of Hong Kong and work to
rebuild civil society abroad? Is it really possible to benefit
those who are still in Hong Kong?
Ms. Wong. We live in exile, working very hard to keep our
spirit and form different NGOs of different natures, different
services. We really want to tell our friends still in Hong Kong
that we never forget them. We are working hard, whether it's
international lobbying or just doing some concrete work for
Hong Kongers who are in need in other countries. This is what
we can do. Of course, we don't think that we can really affect
the current situation in Hong Kong, but we do hope that because
of our lobbying, our advocacy, that international communities
will help to resolve or improve the situation in Hong Kong.
Chair Merkley. Thank you.
Mr. Bickett, let me turn to you. I think it was often
thought that China would restrain itself in regard to Hong
Kong, in part because it had made this agreement when Hong Kong
was turned over, of two systems within one country, in part
because of the implications for Taiwan, and in part because of
the implications for the business community and the concern
that they might destroy the golden egg. And yet the golden egg
hasn't been destroyed by their actions. You do suggest in your
testimony that the business community has been put in a
situation where they had previously relied on transparency and
independence of the legal system, but the legal system is
completely corrupted now.
What have we seen as the reaction of the business
community? And is the business community proceeding forward,
maintaining its presence in Hong Kong, more or less
accommodating itself to the National Security Law?
Mr. Bickett. I think we're seeing a number of different
attitudes. Overall, I think I would say that the business
community, especially the foreign business community, is not as
concerned as they should be about what's happening in Hong
Kong. I think a lot of businesses are somewhat deluding
themselves that the breakdown of the rule of law and of the
court system will only apply to political individuals, locals,
things like that. Obviously, my case raises questions about
that, but there are other issues that have come up that I think
suggest that that's simply not the case.
One only needs to look over the border into China to see
why. Does any foreign company operating in China really think
that if they have a dispute with, say, China Construction Bank,
that they're going to have any chance of winning that dispute
in China, no matter what the situation is? Does any company
think that if they have intellectual property that they want to
protect and have a legal right to protect in China, that
they're going to be able to do so? No. I can't imagine any
reason why that would be different in Hong Kong, now that
China's decided to do what it's doing to Hong Kong.
Beyond that, I think companies are playing a little fast
and loose with their own employees. Companies are telling their
employees: Don't worry. Go over there. It's safe. You can be an
expat in Hong Kong. You can live up on Victoria Peak and nobody
will ever notice you. I think my case shows why that's simply
not the case. Companies really need to ask themselves, is it
really worth the business that they're doing in Hong Kong and
in China to be putting their employees at risk, to be putting
their business at risk? It's going to continue to clamp down on
people, and there are going to be arbitrary arrests of
Americans and of others for political reasons or otherwise.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much.
Mr. Bickett and Mr. Ching, in your testimony you both call
for the United States to provide special immigration pathways
for Hong Kongers. This has been a major priority for members of
this Commission. What message does it send if we welcome to our
shores those fleeing persecution? And what message does it send
if we fail to welcome to our shores those who are fleeing
persecution? Either of you feel free to jump in.
Mr. Bickett. I can go first. Look, I think all of us on
this panel have a lot of friends in Hong Kong, and know a lot
of people who are trying to leave. This is noticed, right?
What's happening in the U.S. domestically or with foreign
policy, it's noticed by those abroad. What happened in the 2020
election is noticed by those abroad. And what's happening with
the United Kingdom, with Australia, with Canada, welcoming Hong
Kong refugees with open arms, people notice it and people talk
about it. When people talk about where they're going to go,
they tell us that they don't feel welcome in the United States.
I think that, frankly, there are a lot of people in our
leadership who don't want to welcome them, and I think that's
really unfortunate. Hong Kongers are ideal immigrants who would
come here and make an incredible contribution. I really hope
that the provisions, particularly in the America COMPETES Act,
can be included in the final version of the bill that gets
passed by Congress.
Chair Merkley. Mr. Ching, did you wish to comment? Then
I'll turn this over to my co-chair.
Mr. Ching. I agree with Samuel. American society has been
regarded as the beacon of freedom and democracy and yet when
Hong Kong was in its worst days, there was not sufficient
support for a channel for people coming to the U.S. I
understand that applying for political asylum takes a long,
long time. For example, in my case I've been waiting for two
years without getting an interview. This kind of attitude is
quite discouraging to those who try to seek refuge in the U.S.,
which was considered as the beacon of freedom by people around
the world. I think there should be better access for those who
want to come to the U.S., to have this chance.
Chair Merkley. Thank you.
I'm going to turn this over to Co-chair McGovern. When it
comes back to my second round, I want to clarify what you
pointed out there, that you've been applying for two years to
be able to come to the United States and that your application
has not been granted. Thank you.
Co-chair McGovern.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
Each of you has testified in support of imposing additional
sanctions on Hong Kong officials. In 2020, then-Chief Executive
Carrie Lam famously said that she keeps piles of cash at home
because she has no bank account after U.S. sanctions landed on
her. So two years later, have officials had time to adjust, and
can you assess the effectiveness of further sanctions, both
materially and symbolically? I'd ask everybody for a brief
answer. Mr. Bickett, why don't we begin with you?
Mr. Bickett. I have a couple of points on the sanctions
issue. In my past life I was a sanctions lawyer in the
corporate context as well. You know, sanctions are a mixed bag.
I have, sort of, some reluctance on sanctions and how they're
used. In particular, if you look at something like the Carrie
Lam sanctions, they're great in the sense that they send a
message, they encourage Hong Kongers, and they make a
difference. It's also hilarious, the image of her having cash
in her house. I think it makes Hong Kongers very happy to know
that, but it doesn't deter anyone. Individual sanctions against
a leader don't deter anyone, and that's why my testimony
focused on civil servants.
If you start sanctioning a group of civil servants at a
lower level, prosecutors who have prosecuted particularly
egregious cases, police officers who have been responsible for
torture, or things like that in the mid-level, then people
lower in the ranks start to realize, hey, you know, this isn't
just going to be Carrie Lam and her cash house. This is going
to be us, potentially. Those are the people who are not going
to go out and say, I quit, and leave the service, but they're
going to potentially quietly start restraining themselves a
little bit, and there is an urgency since a lot of these cases
are still going through the system. Once they've all gone
through the system, there's going to be little deterrent
effect. It's all going to be done. So that's something that I
would encourage Congress to do very quickly.
As for whether there's been time to adjust, that's
absolutely true. You know, we don't get the details, but I
would assume that by this point Carrie Lam and John Lee and
these people who have been sanctioned have been able to get a
bank account through a Chinese bank. That's sort of the double-
edged sword of sanctions. The more the United States uses them,
the more our adversaries adjust and find ways to get around
them and set up mechanisms to do so. With that said, Carrie Lam
will never be able to travel to the United States. She
probably, despite them not issuing sanctions, won't be able to
get a ticket to go to the U.K. or to Europe.
These things matter. They matter to Carrie Lam who, despite
everything that she says, absolutely loves the West and doesn't
want to spend the rest of her days in China, and they certainly
would matter to civil servants who might have money, family,
and just simple travel plans abroad.
Co-chair McGovern. Mr. Ching.
Mr. Ching. I think sanctions have symbolic value, sending a
strong message to those who want to implement Beijing's
draconian law. I think the sanctions should go right to the
top. Not just the middle-level officials. In my mind, I think
Xi Jinping himself could be personally held accountable for all
the atrocities he committed in Hong Kong. In 2008 he came to
Hong Kong and said that the power system in Hong Kong, the
state powers--executive, judicial, and legislative--should
cooperate with each other. Here is the man who first violated
the Basic Law commitment to Hong Kong, and I think if any
sanction is going to be effective, it should be directed at the
number-one man who brought about all these problems in Hong
Kong. If you simply sanction Carrie Lam or John Lee, it won't
be as effective. If the American Government is adamant about
punishing the CCP, sanctions efforts should be directed at Xi
Jinping.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
Ms. Wong.
Ms. Wong. I agree that sanctions to individual officers,
either number one or Hong Kong top officials, would have very
important symbolic meaning, even though maybe they get just
another way to have, you know, the Bank of China. As far as
other Hong Kong officials are concerned, they don't have any
so-called mission, or whatever. What they have is personal
interest. Certainly, if the sanctions go personal, that would
be more effective. At least it would make them have second
thoughts about it, so I will agree with Mr. Ching.
Co-chair McGovern. Yes.
Mr. Poon.
Mr. Poon. Yes, I certainly agree with all of them. I think
as far as the sanctions, if they could be targeted on the top
and also the medium level, that actually would send a very
clear message to government officials that they would not be
spared if they continue their human rights violations. Then I
think that for further sanctions, they should influence
businesses also because as I argued earlier, we shouldn't make
businesses feel that they can do business as usual.
Also, for some of the family members of senior officials--
Carrie Lam's family is still living overseas without any
consequences. I mean, I'm not saying they should be punished,
but when so many young protesters in Hong Kong tried so hard to
flee Hong Kong, but there's actually not enough ways for them
to flee Hong Kong, but they can see Carrie Lam's family can
still really lead a good life overseas, it's actually quite
ironic. I mean, if we want to have something more useful, it
should be very, very strong sanctions conditions and shouldn't
just be restricted to a very few conditions. Thank you.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you. I'm out of time. I
unfortunately have to go to another hearing, but at some point
further on as you're answering questions, one of the things
that I think would be important for us to hear is whether or
not you think that our current administration here in
Washington, or Congress, whether or not there is an impression
that we are taking matters in Hong Kong seriously enough,
whether or not we are responding in a way that people think we
should. My guess is that you don't and so that's why these
recommendations and this conversation is important, to figure
out what we can do next and what we can do more, because what
is happening in Hong Kong is unconscionable, and some of the
people that the chairman and I mentioned and Mr. Smith
mentioned, these are people we not only know but they're our
friends. They're good people who are in jail for no good
reason. It really is quite shocking and unconscionable. I thank
you all and I yield back. Thank you.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Co-chair McGovern.
Let's turn to Congressman Smith.
Representative Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
want to thank our distinguished witnesses for their very
sobering testimony, which I think makes very clear that we are
not doing enough, and that goes for Congress. It goes for the
President. It goes for other world leaders. We would like to
comment further on that.
You know, we are living in a time when Xi Jinping is
directly responsible for genocide against the Uyghurs, and
other people in that region of the world, in Xinjiang, and when
he continues to bitterly oppress the Tibetan people, when he
commits gross violations of human rights across the entirety of
China, with the prevalence and the pervasive use of such things
as torture, the theft of people's organs simply because the
Chinese Communist Party wants to make money. Well, Xi Jinping
is directly responsible for all of that and the ongoing
oppression of the people of Hong Kong.
I'm just wondering why you think we are not doing more. Is
it empathy fatigue? Is it that people in the West, while they
were originally outraged over certain behaviors, began to
accommodate and then actually enable, however unwittingly? I
don't think we do enough, and I would appreciate your thoughts
on that. When, Ms. Wong, you said that civil society is dead,
that is horrible. That is heartbreaking because these are the
people, as you pointed out, your friends--and our friends too--
but your friends at a very, very personal level.
Please know how much all of us feel for you and for your
fellow Hong Kongers who have fought so hard and see nothing but
Xi Jinping's oppression in the future, unless the world rallies
in a very significant way. I mean, the sanctions we've done
have been a slap on the wrist. That's all it is. It's not much
more, and it needs to significantly expand. I would appreciate
any thoughts all of you might have on that.
Mr. Bickett, thank you for your testimony. Which U.S.
companies do continue to enable? I have found--and I'm one of
those who, going back to when MFN status was delinked from
human rights, on May 26, 1994, by President Clinton, in my
humble opinion that's when we largely lost China, with that
delinkage, and sadly, we haven't been able to get it back. It
seems to me that the companies are the glue that helps this
dictatorship stay wedded to profits and power, and maybe you
might want to speak again to specific companies and industries
that are acting in a way that is totally self-interested and
not interested in the people of Hong Kong.
If you would address in your answers the social credit
system, which is applied throughout China; obviously, many of
the businesses are both in mainland China and in Hong Kong,
while it would appear it's not directly imposed upon Hong
Kongers, this idea of surveilling every Chinese citizen and
business with the use of data to monitor, shape, and rate
financial, social, religious, or political behaviors, it is the
worst manifestation of the surveillance state the world has
ever known. I'm wondering how that applies currently in Hong
Kong, especially with this escalating influence, almost total
dominance, by Xi Jinping on China.
Finally, in May of last year the State Administration of
Religious Affairs, or SARA, issued new regulations entitled the
Administrative Measures for Religious Clergy. It forces all
clergy to pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party.
Article 3 of the regulations states, ``religious clergy should
love the motherland, support the leadership of the Chinese
Communist Party, support the socialist system, and adhere to
the direction of centralization of religion in China.''
This is an invasive usurpation of religious freedom, and we
have already seen its deadly effects in places like Tibet and
elsewhere. I'm wondering, is any of this being applied, and to
what extent, in Hong Kong? The Basic Law, obviously, was
supposed to convey fundamental religious freedom. Sinicization
means simply all religions must comport with the principles of
Xi Jinping and Chinese Communist ideology. If you could speak
to that I would appreciate it as well. I yield to our
witnesses, beginning with Mr. Bickett, if you could.
Mr. Bickett. Sure. I'll try to go through those, maybe not
in that order. Starting with the last one, the most notable, as
you mentioned earlier, clampdown on religion is the arrest of
Cardinal Zen, who was really just doing his duty as a religious
figure and was arrested for that. What I think may have not
gotten seen as closely in the news with that is that the
Vatican actually just threw him under the bus. I think it was
the secretary of state in the Vatican, the cardinal there, who
outright said to the media: Well, we just hope that this
doesn't affect our upcoming renewal of an agreement with China
to allow cardinals in the country. You know, I'm not a
Catholic, but that's certainly not the Christ I know and the
Christianity that I practice. I just can't imagine them
throwing the cardinal under the bus for that.
Let me go back to the question that was specifically
directed to me, which is about particular businesses. There are
a lot. I think what I'll highlight is the financial industry.
Banks are a little bit more subject to public pressure in the
sense that a lot of them have public accounts in the U.S., and
things like that. Private equity and funds are I think the
biggest offenders here. There's a great report that came out
from Hong Kong Watch a couple of weeks ago that specifically
addressed these issues with respect to BlackRock, Blackstone,
and some of these major investors into China. Another one that
I'll point out here is venture capital--Sequoia Capital--the
head of their China business is a high-ranking official in
China, and their investments show it.
Some of these private equity and venture capital firms,
they'll release happy press releases talking about their new
investment into Chinese surveillance companies and how it's
helped that company grow. These are American companies. I don't
know for sure, but I think a big difference with these
companies versus, say, just a typical--The Gap, is that The Gap
worries about boycotts in the United States from regular
people. The Gap worries about how their image will look across
the world. Blackstone, KKR, far less so, simply because I think
they're very complex firms and most people don't understand
what they're doing. They simply don't get that much blowback
for it. And I think that needs to change.
I'll leave the other questions to other people. I know that
we're running over time.
Representative Smith. Ms. Wong.
Ms. Wong. Sorry, I have no knowledge about the business
sector.
Representative Smith. Are world leaders, including
President Biden, doing enough in raising the issue of Hong
Kong, and looking to do perhaps--which I think are needed--
additional sanctions? Especially against Xi Jinping?
Ms. Wong. No, not at all, so sorry to say that, because I
think that the U.S should really, really defend democracy--
because now I think it's so important, human rights and
democracy--against authoritarianism. I think there should be
concrete action, not just empty promises. I mean, concrete
action really to defend democracy the world over. Hong Kong's a
good case where you have a political decision to defend
democracy, is what I want to say.
Representative Smith. Thank you.
Mr. Bickett. If I can just pile on on sanctions. As I've
said, I think sanctions are important--Xi Jinping or anything
else. Xi Jinping is not personally going to be affected by
American sanctions. Let's be clear about that. It's symbolic.
It would be nice.
Representative Smith. What about--and I agree with you to a
large extent--but what about if he were to be singled out? I
mean, you talk about committing genocide in plain view, and of
course the oppression of the people of Hong Kong is an
egregious human rights abuse. Where is the International
Criminal Court and like-minded bodies? I mean, they're never
held accountable. People like Charles Taylor and Slobodan
Milosevic?, we wait until they're out of power or the world
community finally wakes up, long after the bloodletting and the
abuse is finished. This is in real time, as we meet. I mean,
it's worth an effort, I would think, to hold him liable
before----
Chair Merkley. Congressman, after the response to this
question we're going to be turning to Senator Ossoff.
Mr. Bickett [continuing.]. The International Criminal Court
(ICC); I think everyone in this hearing would probably agree
that it has very, very limited powers, and in particular it has
no enforcement mechanism. Where you see ICC or international
prosecutions, it's because the governments have turned the
people over. With that said, I agree with you that there's
something to be said for if not Xi Jinping, investigations
into, in particular, the genocide in Xinjiang, the activities
in Hong Kong, etc., and Tibet as well.
I think the point I always try to emphasize on sanctions is
that I worry in the U.S. Congress and the Presidency that
sanctions often are used as an easy way to say we're doing
something and then issue a few sanctions on individuals who it
might affect a little, without changing any policy abroad, and
then packing up and going home. I mean, that's in particular
why I focused in my introduction on something like a Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act-like law that would actually target
American companies behaving badly, because that's what we have
the most influence over. Yes, sanctions, issue them, but it
can't be all that we do. It simply--at the end of the day, it
does not do enough by any stretch to further American policy
abroad.
Chair Merkley. Thank you.
Senator Ossoff.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I'd
ask consent to enter into the record the names of 13
journalists or defenders of press freedom who are currently
under arrest, in detention, or incarcerated in Hong Kong.
Chair Merkley. Without objection.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you know, prior
to my election to the Senate I worked in the production of
investigative journalism, investigating war crimes, official
corruption, human rights abuses. Mr. Ching, I'd like to ask you
for a detailed update on how, since the imposition of the
National Security Law on Hong Kong, the CCP's efforts to
dismantle press freedom and freedom of expression are
continuing.
Mr. Ching. OK. First of all, the chilling effect of the
closing down of Apple Daily is really very, very alarming. The
Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC), for example, has run this
Human Rights Press Award for over 26 or 25 years. After going
through all this process of selecting the awardees, the FCC
suddenly announced that they were going to suspend it, citing
the National Security Law, which imposed an elusive red line.
Now this is a very big blow to press freedom in Hong Kong
because the FCC has been promoting itself as one of the
vanguards of press freedom and yet succumbed to the pressure of
the National Security Law.
Following the action of the FCC, a number of other press
organizations also chose to shut down. For example, the Hong
Kong Journalists Association the other day passed a resolution
to lower the threshold for self-dissolution. Why? Because it
anticipated pressure from the authorities to close it down.
Instead of being forced to close down, they chose to try to
dissolve voluntarily. Although they have a very high bar for
this self-dissolution, they convened an annual general meeting
to lower the bar, lower the threshold for self-dissolution.
Unfortunately, the one that I have founded, the Independent
Commentators Association, chose to wind down silently,
voluntarily.
The chilling effect is so strong that I think it will have
a big impact on journalism in Hong Kong. Keith Richburg, the
president of FCC, he is also teaching at the Journalism and
Media Studies Centre (JMSC) in Hong Kong U, which is a very
renowned education outlet for journalism. He told his students
to be careful and to be smart in avoiding the red line. If this
kind of mentality is taught, passed on to future generations of
journalists, then I don't think Hong Kong will be able to
maintain a press freedom environment anymore. I think the
chilling effect of being shut down, the way Apple Daily and
Stand News were shut down, were quite serious in intimidating
the entire profession.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Ching. With my remaining
time, can you comment, if you have any knowledge or experience,
on how the CCP is seeking to influence or intimidate or coerce
or shape reporting, publication, and journalism pertaining to
Hong Kong, even by reporters, writers and publications who are
beyond Hong Kong's borders, or beyond the PRC's borders? How do
they engage in such efforts internationally?
Mr. Ching. Well, the most common tactic is this united
front strategy. They'll try to get close to you, even if you
are far away from Chinese judicial territory. They will try to
get someone close to you, try to persuade you that China is not
that bad. Maybe you are misguided by misinformation from the
West, and things like that. They try to befriend you and try to
get your trust, and then by and by, they will tell you what you
should report and what you should avoid. For journalists
outside of China, they don't have this long arm yet, but they
will try to have colleagues conducting this kind of united
front strategy on you.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Ching. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman. I yield back.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Senator Ossoff.
I want to go back to Mr. Ching. You're operating now from
Los Angeles, but you mentioned that you've been applying for
some form of immigration status for a couple years without it
coming through. Can you expand on that story a bit, to give us
some insight?
Mr. Ching. Yes. I came to the U.S. for a conference, but
because of COVID-19, all the flights back to Hong Kong were
suspended and I had to wait for reassignment ever since.
Finally the National Security Law comes in, and looking at the
law itself, I understood that I had no hope of returning home
safely, so I applied for political asylum in the States. That
was two years ago. I didn't even get a chance to interview, and
I wonder if it's because of this: some senators have pointed
out that the U.S. might not be very receptive to political
refugees from Hong Kong. Maybe this is the reason, and I hope
therefore that you can map out a way to expedite political
refugees who want to come to the U.S.
Chair Merkley. So even in a situation where you're at
extraordinary risk should you return to Hong Kong, because of
your commentaries and your writings, the asylum process has
just essentially been frozen?
Mr. Ching. Sorry?
Chair Merkley. The asylum process for you--for
consideration of your application for asylum--has essentially
been dysfunctional or frozen?
Mr. Ching. I don't know. I don't know what happened.
Chair Merkley. OK. Well, thank you. I do think that the
fact that our door has not been open to champions of human
rights and free speech and free assembly who are being
oppressed through the National Security Law is of great concern
to me.
I did want to turn to you, Mr. Bickett. You had the
experience of being detained and subjected to extensive--I
guess, being trapped in a room at 35 degrees. From your
knowledge of the prisons in Hong Kong, is this the only
technique? What other techniques are used to make people
suffer, if you will? I've heard references that the biggest
fear is being deported to China. If that is correct, could you
expand a little bit on that; that is, on being deported to
mainland China from Hong Kong.
Mr. Bickett. Sure, and if I could just add on, on your
previous question on asylum. One of the big reasons why--most
of the activists that you sometimes see roaming these halls
trying to bug senators about things in particular, is that many
of the Hong Kong activists are applying for asylum right now.
One of the big reasons why it's just a wholly inadequate
solution for Hong Kong and Chinese immigrants is that once you
file that application, all of these people are effectively cut
off from their lives in Hong Kong. If you apply for asylum, it
certainly puts you on a political list. It puts your family on
political lists. They can't really communicate with their
families anymore to keep them safe; whereas if there were just
a normal mechanism for them to come to this country, we'd be
less likely to draw that attention. They're also heavily
restricted from traveling, so that's a particular issue for
many of the activists, who need to go to conferences, who need
to go try to raise awareness about China and Hong Kong. There
is a process where they can apply to Customs and Immigration
for leave to travel abroad, but it's usually either denied or
delayed greatly. so it's just really an inadequate solution for
people.
On your other question about treatment in custody, when I
was put in the freezing room, this is a very common thing that
the police do--not the prisons necessarily, but the police when
you're in custody. There was somebody who died from it a few
months ago, and it really came out how many people were really
going through this. I think it's a way for them to not leave
marks on people but to enhance interrogation or torture,
whatever you want to call it. It's pretty widespread. There are
beatings that people have reported and violence from police.
You don't hear that in as much of a widespread way as you do
the freezing room and other things that don't leave a mark.
In the prisons themselves most correctional services
officers are relatively mild, particularly at the junior
levels. My impression is that--I should qualify this with the
fact that because of who I was, because of my high profile and
because of my foreign passport, I was clearly kept away from
certain things. You did see police--or you did see prison
officials--beating people sometimes. You saw them punishing
people in ways they shouldn't have. It was rarely related to
politics. It was more related to, this person is annoying me.
Where we see more systematic abuse of prisoners--high-
profile political prisoners--in the prison system is directed
by senior officials. In particular, you have someone like Jimmy
Lai, who's been talked about a lot today, from Apple Daily, who
is kept isolated from the entire prison population, supposedly
for his own protection but really as a way to make him suffer.
He is supposed to be allowed out for an hour a day for
exercise. That may happen or it may not, but otherwise, he's
just sitting in a room and isn't allowed to really interact. No
interaction with people, that's truly torture. I can't imagine.
He's not the only one. That happens to a lot of other high-
profile political prisoners. They use a mechanism in their own
regulations that supposedly allows them to remove people for
protection reasons and then they just extend it and extend it
for years.
Chair Merkley. Can you address the fear folks have of being
deported to China and possibly being cut off from all contact
with individuals----
Mr. Bickett. Yes. I think that this is a fear for some of
the high-profile people. People thought it was going to happen
to Jimmy Lai for quite some time. There were some leaks coming
out of the judiciary. Jimmy Lai's case, up to the Court of
Final Appeal (CFA), which is effectively the supreme court, was
the first test of how the CFA was going to deal with the
National Security Law. They ruled against Jimmy Lai and
basically ruled that he should be held indefinitely without
trial, before trial. There were leaks that came out that
effectively this may have been because the court realized if
they didn't do that, that Jimmy Lai and all of these others
would be sent to China.
I don't say that to defend this court, which has been, you
know, absolutely cowardly in how it's dealt with these issues,
but it shows that in most aspects of society there is always
that present threat; the simple threat of being sent to China
makes prisoners act differently, makes civil society act
differently. Fermi can speak to that as well. It is a huge fear
for Hong Kongers.
Chair Merkley. Thank you. I want to turn to Mr. Poon and
Ms. Wong. One of the threats I often hear about is a concern
about retaliation against family members who are still in Hong
Kong or in China. Can either of you shed any light on this
risk? Have you had any experiences in which your own extended
family, friends, associates in Hong Kong or China have been
pressured in various ways because of your courage to speak out?
Mr. Poon. What I have been hearing from many of my friends
who are living in the U.K.--I was in the U.K. in the past year
before coming to Japan. Many people who used to work in or
still work in the NGO sector, they don't really want to talk.
That's why I am not among those who have always been talking
publicly, but now you can see that I need to talk about the
situation publicly because all the more famous ones feel a lot
of pressure, and they really are fearing that they would be
facing a lot of threats and danger.
I think because of the atmosphere, people would feel that
they would not want to take the risk, and they also see the
example of Ted Hui, for instance, where you see the kind of
pressure and also his bank accounts being frozen, etc. and also
his being charged, even though he's already outside of Hong
Kong. From these examples, it actually also makes others feel
very, very threatened if they want to talk in public, even
those who used to be very famous and very outspoken when they
were in Hong Kong. I can feel the immediate threat they feel
and then also the worry among them.
Chair Merkley. Ms. Wong.
Ms. Wong. For myself, yes, I've been struggling. You can
tell that they are not calling for sanctions to particular
persons, because my family are still in Hong Kong. If anything
happens to me, I'm prepared to cut off my relationship with my
family, but I know that may not help. The NGO I founded has a
board of directors; I worry because they're still serving
ethnic minorities. My society is the first one and the only one
that does advocacy for ethnic minorities, so yes, I have fear.
In fact, even though some of my friends asked me to attend
the UN hearing just as before, I worried that it would do harm
to my board of directors in Hong Kong and my family, so I did
not go. Someone has to state what has been happening in Hong
Kong and really call on the international community to do
something, for example, the USA.
Chair Merkley. Well, thank you all. I keep having more
questions come to mind based on your testimony and the
situation, but we're out of time and there's a vote underway
that will be closing, so I'm going to have to wrap this up. But
it's not the end of the dialogue because the Commission is
working every single day with an extraordinary team to shed
light on these issues in Hong Kong and in China and China's
oppression of the rights of people in so many different ways.
I really appreciate Mr. Poon, Ms. Wong, Mr. Ching, Mr.
Bickett, your courage, your testimony, your outspoken and
continuing work on behalf of freedom of speech, freedom of
assembly, and freedom of religion, and democratic processes so
that there is government by and for the people. We have seen
that extinguished in an extraordinarily dramatic fashion in
Hong Kong in an incredibly short period of time, in complete
violation of the commitments that China has made. We need to
find every conceivable way to respond and to resist, and I
appreciate the recommendations that you've put forward at this
hearing.
The record will remain open until the close of business on
Friday, July 15 for any items members would like to submit for
the record or for any additional questions for our witnesses.
Again, thank you to every champion of human rights, of
democracy, of opportunity, and of freedom. This hearing is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:47 a.m., the hearing was concluded.]
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A P P E N D I X
=======================================================================
Prepared Statements
------
Prepared Statement of Patrick Poon
I would like to thank the CECC and this distinguished audience for
giving me this opportunity to share my experience and my view on the
situation of the civil society in Hong Kong. I will focus on the
drastic change of civil society space from the time I changed my job as
a journalist to become an NGO worker with local and international NGOs
since the early 2000s to the era of ``red net'', as I would describe,
after the National Security Law was imposed on Hong Kong by the Chinese
authorities. Red line is simply not enough to describe the scope. The
Hong Kong and Chinese governments wouldn't even make it clear about
where the red line is so that they can arbitrarily restrict Hong Kong
people's freedoms. The message is clear--you can only survive if you
don't challenge the government.
When I started my NGO career focusing on supporting workers,
writers and lawyers in mainland China, the civil society was very
vibrant. We could organize all kinds of activities, ranging from
staging demonstrations to call for release of detained dissidents in
China to arranging writers and lawyers to meet with their counterparts
in Hong Kong. We never experienced any interference or felt any
threats. Even when I was an Amnesty researcher, I wouldn't fear too
much for my personal risk when I commented on the detention of Chinese
dissents or when I worked on documenting Uyghur and Kazakh cases in
relation to the political re-education camps. I still remember how a
mainland Chinese writer once exclaimed when he arrived in Hong Kong and
I met him at the train station: ``I could finally breathe the air of
freedom.'' It was a time when many young university graduates in Hong
Kong would be willing to get a relatively low salary to work on issues
that we believed we could do something to help our friends in China.
During that time, I was able to communicate with many high-profile
mainland Chinese dissidents without fear. Late Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Liu Xiaobo had so much hope for Hong Kong's support that he
contacted me and several others in Hong Kong in late 2008 to invite
prominent pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong to co-sign the ``Charter
08''. Many of those democratic figures, some of them now in prison, and
myself were among the first batch of co-signatories. We didn't need to
think much when we decided to co-sign it. These experiences led me to
continue my work in international NGOs like Amnesty as I believed that
it is significant to push China to comply with its international
obligations. It was unimaginable at that time that Hong Kong's freedom
of expression and freedom of assembly would bea completely gone. Even
prayer meetings or a mass to commemorate the victims of the Tiananmen
Massacre are now deemed too sensitive.
For NGOs in Hong Kong, we used to feel secure to co-organize talks
on human rights issues in China and Hong Kong, no matter public or
closed-door, with universities in Hong Kong. We didn't need to worry
too much about our personal safety compared with activists in China.
But now, everyone needs to have a second thought or self-censor the
content of the events before planning such activities. We used to be
able to organize public talks by inviting human rights lawyers from
China to share their experiences to the general public. Now, it's just
unimaginable how similar activities could be done anymore in Hong Kong.
We used to be able to hold public rallies, from small-scale
demonstrations outside China's Central Government Liaison Office
calling for the release of detained Chinese dissidents to mass rallies
calling for universal suffrage in Hong Kong, without any interference.
Police officers at that time were friendly and would even engage in
discussing the route with the organizers. The police made it very clear
to us that we didn't need to get their permission to hold any rallies.
We only needed to inform them, and they would routinely issue a
``letter of no-objection'', only formalities, despite a Public Order
Ordinance (that has been repeatedly criticized by UN human rights
experts as restrictive of freedom of assembly). Sometimes, the police
would just call us to confirm that we would be organizing a
demonstration if we forgot to inform them in advance. However, after
the anti-extradition bill protests in 2019 and the imposition of the
NSL in 2020, the situation has completely changed. Anybody appearing in
places like the Victoria Park, where the annual candlelight vigil to
commemorate the Tiananmen Massacre used to take place, on 4 June would
be questioned by the police and warned that they would be charged with
``illegal assembly'' if they stay there. Like many Hongkongers, I
honestly didn't believe that unionist Lee Cheuk-yan, solicitor and
former legislator Albert Ho and barrister Chow Hang-tung, leaders of
the now disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic
Movements of China which organized the annual candlelight vigil, would
be accused of ``inciting an unauthorized assembly'' for an assembly
that had been allowed for over 30 years. They are now even facing the
same notorious charge of ``inciting subversion of state power'' like
many Chinese activists.
Finally, I would also like to share a bit about experience as a
former court reporter as I'm puzzled how difficult it is to cover court
news in Hong Kong nowadays. I covered quite a lot of trials about
protesters being accused of ``obstruction in public place'' for staging
small-scale protests that occupied some space, such as outside China's
Central Government Liaison Office. Those were already the big news in
those days. The sentences the protesters faced were about a few weeks.
Granting bail was considered normal and I never heard any judge at that
time would say that they didn't trust that the defendants would commit
the said offence during bail. Presumption of innocence was well
observed. Reporters wouldn't feel any restrictions on reporting
anything in open trials, except for knowing the fact that we shouldn't
disclose the facts for cases that would be committed to be tried at the
High Court. Now, everything has changed. Even reporting details about
bail application is banned by the courts in Hong Kong. Judges rarely
consider public interest when they make judgements.
I appreciate that there have been some efforts to pressure the Hong
Kong and Chinese governments. However, the situation won't change until
the Hong Kong and Chinese governments can see the real consequences. We
shouldn't give them the impression of business as usual as they are
cracking down on our civil society.
While various governments have issued statements expressing concern
about the erosion of human rights in Hong Kong, it's difficult to see
any real impact as the Chinese and Hong Kong governments have realized
that they can continue doing business despite severe criticism of human
rights records.
Authoritarian regimes like China and their supporters have learned
that they can divert attention of all criticism on human rights by
pointing out that there are also serious human rights violations in
democratic countries. However, check and balance is what democracies
should emphasize as different from tyrannies. Democratic governments
should make the business community realize that there is real
consequence for colluding with dictatorship.
Combining the effort of pushing China and Hong Kong governments to
comply with the international human rights standards and economic
sanctions on senior officials would be the most effective and mutually
beneficial way to ensure accountability, otherwise democracies will
eventually succumb to authoritarian propaganda, which nobody would want
to see.
Therefore, I would urge the U.S. government to impose further
sanctions on all senior Hong Kong and Chinese officials.
Thank you.
______
Prepared Statement of Fermi Wong
Dear Chair, Co-chair, and other Commissioners,
Thank you so much for holding this hearing. I spent my entire adult
life working in the civil society to fight for equality for ethnic
minorities. The dismantling of the civil society under the National
Security Law has completely destroyed the hard gains that took us
decades to achieve.
I was born in China and spent my childhood there. It was in Hong
Kong that I experienced awakening to the universal values of equality,
social justice, and individual rights. I learned that we could take
legal actions to defend our rights.
hong kong as a city of protest
Hong Kong used to be the capital of protests for good reasons.
First, the government was not democratic and not very responsive.
Indeed, the formulation of government policy was very bad. Only when
issues were taken to the streets that officials might respond.
Second, the independent media did a great job at supervising and
putting pressure on the government. They were helpful in amplifying
collective wishes shown in public protests.
Third, Hong Kongers had high awareness of their freedom of assembly
and speech. They used protests to defend their individual rights.
Fourth, there was a gap between rights promised and rights
delivered. The Basic Law Art. 39 provides for human rights protections
as guaranteed by Hong Kong's Bill of Rights, the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. There is also the Equal
Opportunities Law. Long Hair (Leung Kwok Hung, former lawmaker) was
very skilled at using judicial review to fight for rights when the
government did not do what was provided for in the law.
The National Security Law has taken away all these rights.
equality for minorities
I founded Unison because I discovered that Hong Kong had equality
written in the laws but in fact practiced discrimination against ethnic
minorities, especially those of South Asian origins.
Access to education is the most important pathway to overcoming
inequalities. Hong Kong was supposed to have a nine-year free education
policy. However, Hong Kong schools discriminated against South Asians
and denied them equal access. I realized that this discrimination was
invisible to the broader society. So I dedicated myself to putting
equality on the agenda. I formed my own organization and took social
actions such as rallies, assemblies, and petitions. The team gradually
achieved equal access to not just the basic nine years of education
(equivalent to Grade 9), but all the way to university admissions. Our
team moved on to fight for equal access to job opportunities at various
branches of the civil service.
Let me explain how important the broader civil society was in
helping to achieve these gains and how disastrous the National Security
Law crackdown has been on even a seemingly non-political issue as
equality for minorities.
When I first read the National Security Law, I thought that the
crimes of ``secession,'' ``sedition,'' ``terrorism,'' and ``collusion''
with foreign forces should be of no concern to my work. Then I noticed
that the National Security Law instructs the Hong Kong government to
``strengthen propaganda, guidance, supervision, and administration''
over ``schools, social groups, media, and the internet.'' Soon I
realized that the National Security Law means a total crackdown on the
civil society.
As the cause of minority rights is deeply embedded with the civil
society, the very recipe of our team's success has completely
collapsed.
In Hong Kong, many non-governmental organizations, especially those
involved in providing social services, are dependent on government
funding and thus refrain from criticizing government policies. Civic
groups that championed political, social and economic justice, however,
raised funding from the public to maintain their autonomy from the
government. This then required that they mobilize popular support and
raise public awareness by joining forces with protest-related umbrella
organizations, in particular, the Civil Human Rights Front, the
Professional Teachers' Union, and the Confederation of Trade Unions,
all of which have been forced to disband.
I joined the Civil Human Rights Front's human rights group when I
needed to mobilize support from different social sectors to support
legislation against discrimination. Now the Front is gone and there is
no more freedom of assembly.
I worked with the Professional Teachers' Union to achieve equal
access to education. The union not just helped to promote our cause,
but also provided training for teachers involved in education for
minorities where language issues were relevant. The union's chair was
also routinely elected to represent the education sector in the
Legislative Council. These supportive legislators helped push through
anti-discrimination legislation and keep the issue under the spotlight.
Now the union is gone. The legislature has been revamped so that the
seat is occupied by the vice chair of the pro-Beijing Hong Kong
Federation of Education Workers.
I also cooperated closely with the Confederation of Trade Unions.
Ethnic minorities are discriminated against in jobs. Many are working
class laborers and are treated poorly by both supervisors and
coworkers. To fight for their labor rights, Pakistanis and Nepalese set
up a member union under the Confederation. Even the civil service used
to deny minorities job opportunities. They used the excuse that
minorities didn't know Chinese. I shamed the government that if they
retained British officers who didn't speak Chinese, why did they apply
a different standard to South Asians? Lee Cheuk Yan, when he was a
legislator representing the labor sector, helped to secure access to
government jobs for minorities. Now, their own union is gone, the
Confederation is gone, and Lee Cheuk Yan is in jail. The government is
reviewing all unions and asking for explanations of their political
activities. Union leaders have been intimidated into disbanding their
organizations and leaving Hong Kong.
In fighting for social justice, I focused on macrosocial work and
challenged the very formulation of government policies. In my early
career, government officials and school administrators were not
responsive. To get their attention, I called journalists to write
stories and asked legislators to press questions. Today, if you
criticize government policies, you could be arrested for inciting
hatred of the government. The cause has also lost critical allies.
Independent media have been shut down and journalists arrested. Former
pro-democracy legislators are all behind bars or in exile.
Making noises within Hong Kong was not enough to get government
responses. I figured that Hong Kong signed a range of international
agreements that promise equality: the International Covenant on the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights. Thus, I went to international human rights
oversight meetings to pressure the Hong Kong government to honor its
treaty obligations. This kind of international advocacy would lead to
the charge of foreign collusion now.
The National Security Law crackdown has also made it nearly
impossible for civic organizations to raise funds. We used to collect
public donations at mass rallies and from online crowd-funding. Now,
protests are banned and groups who raise fund online have been arrested
for ``money laundering.'' We used to enjoy donations from private
family foundations and local corporate sponsors. Now, they no longer
dare support independent groups for fear of upsetting the government.
We also used to receive funding from international foundations. Now,
this could lead to the charge of foreign collusion. The sources of
funding for civil society organizations have dried up.
After over two decades of hard work, ethnic minorities finally felt
proud that they were accepted as Hong Kongers. By 2019, many South
Asians who grew up in Hong Kong could speak fluent Cantonese. They
received university education and became successful professionals in
different sectors. Some even became recognizable faces in the media and
ran for elected office.
The crackdown has set everything back. If we ethnic Chinese Hong
Kongers are fearful of the National Security Law, minorities are even
more so. Many minority youth were arrested during the anti-extradition
protest. They have received much less help with legal fees and other
support. South Asians are also worried that their ties with their
hometowns could make them vulnerable to charges of foreign collusion.
Minorities love Hong Kong and don't understand China, now Hong Kong
has become like China--they are lost as to what to do and who they are.
The crackdown has been such a shock to the entire community that even
elites have withdrawn from the society. They have resorted to the
original position that they had over two decades ago: ``we are always
seen as outsiders''; ``don't complain about discrimination''; ``don't
talk about fighting for your rights.''
This is utterly heartbreaking development. I should add that
minority rights represent just one example. The same is happening to
LGBT rights and other vulnerable groups, such as sex workers.
social work
As a social worker, let me take this opportunity to address
worrisome developments in the profession.
The profession's code of conduct specifies that social workers
promote human rights and social justice. Under the National Security
Law, social work will go down like journalism. It will lose its soul.
Social workers will no longer dare to do advocacy work. Nor will they
have the resources to do so.
There is a fundamental distinction between civil society groups
that raise their own funds and social welfare organizations that are
dependent on government funding. The former will find it difficult to
continue. The latter don't dare criticize government policies and will
exercise even more self-censorship. The government is also subjecting
funding of social service organizations to annual review, making them
more beholden to official policies.
We should also see what many social service organizations really
are. The pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong
Kong and the pro-Beijing Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions have been
cultivating their own social workers and social service community
centers. Such pro-establishment organizations receive government
funding to provide social services to residents, in an effort to win
votes for their party members.
The Liaison Office and the Labor Bureau are organizing study
sessions to learn Xi Jinping's Hong Kong speech on the handover's 25th
anniversary. The Labor Bureau will take note of which organizations
show up for consideration of future funding. Social service
organizations that are not in the government camp have to think hard if
they need to show up in order to survive.
The social sector will be further controlled by legal changes to
undermine its self-governing authority in certifying qualifications.
Social workers who violate the National Security Law could be
deregistered for life.
______
Prepared Statement of Ching Cheong
a. overview
1. The dismantling of Hong Kong's (HK's) Civil Society started as
soon as the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed in 1984. Despite
the open pledge of ``one country two systems'' with ``Hongkong people
ruling Hongkong'', enjoying a ``high degree of autonomy'' for 50 years,
what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) did was to send swarms of
national security agents to HK to make sure that ``the transition (from
British to Chinese sovereignty) will be based on solid power''.
2. In 1984, China started to draft the Basic Law, the mini-
constitution for post-1997 HK. During the drafting process, the CCP had
already shown signs that it would somehow roll back on its promise. It
reminded the law-drafters that post-1997 HK should only be an economic
city and not a political one, which suggested that the thriving civil
society might be curtailed. The CCP was wary of HK becoming a
bridgehead of Western political influences to subvert its one-party
dictatorship.
3. With this apprehension in mind, the CCP began to identify forces
that it thought might be endangering its dictatorial rule By the early
1990's. I was shown (but not given) a draft report prepared by a senior
national security cadre in which it advised that the central government
should watch out for after 1997. These include: 1. Journalists, 2.
Religious leaders, 3. Lawyers, 4. Educators, and 5. Social workers. I
said this report would mislead Beijing and ruin Hong Kong, for they
formed the key pillars of the city's civil society. Unfortunately, I
couldn't convince them to change their views. We have been paying the
price for this.
4. In 2003, just five years after the handover, the CCP had already
mapped out a detail plan aimed at suppressing these five groups of
people. It compiled a data base of all the prominent figures in each of
these sectors and classified them according to their political attitude
towards the CCP either as friendly, neutral or animus and develop
different united front strategy for them, either to co-opt or eliminate
them. It set up a psychological warfare department to discredit those
who fell under their ``strike-list''. The scene was set for an overall
crackdown of HK's civil society.
5. Beginning 2003, the CCP took several important measures to
abrogate its Basic Law commitments. All these measures were aimed at
imposing the CCP's will on HK, and gradually convert HK from a free
society to an authoritarian one. Such efforts culminated in the
enactment of the draconian National Security Law (NSL) which ultimately
destroyed HK's civil society.
b. the media sector
6. HK's media sector was the first to be compromised. Before 1984,
HK's media market was dominated by anti-CCP publications, with pro-CCP
ones numbering just five (Wen Wei Po, Ta Kung Pao, New Evening News,
Ching Pao and Commercial Daily) with a combined readership less than
80,000. Thus, the CCP started with converting the most important anti-
CCP media, using its so-called ``magic weapon'' of united front
strategy. The Director of the Xinhua News Agency Xu Jiatun, the CCP's
number one man in HK, started with a friendly approach by wining and
dining newspaper owners and executives.
7. For example, to woo Sing Tao Daily, a well-established pro-
Taiwan newspaper, Xu arranged a charter flight for the publisher Sally
Aw Sian to visit her hometown in Fujian Province, which the family had
not stepped foot on for decades. To coopt the liberal Ming Pao, which
asked the embarrassing question why Beijing was adamant at taking back
Hong Kong while forfeiting legitimate claims to huge tract of
territories taken away by Russia, Deng Xiaoping himself hosted
publisher Louis Cha a dinner. This honor succeeded in silencing him.
8. Other means to transform the HK media milieu included outright
acquisition of shares of major news outlets by pro-China business
tycoons, such as the acquisition of the influential South China Morning
Post by Malaysian sugar tycoon Robert Kuok in 1993, the Ming Pao by
Malaysian media tycoon Tiong Hiew King. This trend continued after 1997
with a CCP member Li Ruiguang acquiring a majority share of the most
influential outlet TVB in 2015. Such acquisition resulted in obvious
change in their respective editorial policies.
9. By 2012, the remaining mainstream news outlet that was still
critical of the CCP and supportive of the democracy movement was Jimmy
Lai's Next Magazine and the Apple Daily, together with a few web-based
media such as the Stand News and the Citizen News. They too became the
natural targets of the CCP.
10. The enactment of the National Security Law in 2020 gave the
authority wide-sweeping power to shutter all the remaining pro-
democracy news outlets, with Apple Daily and the Stand News bearing the
full brunt. The chilling effect was obvious. For example, the FCC
voluntarily suspended its annual Human Rights Press Awards, citing the
elusive red line. The Hongkong Journalist Association lowered its
threshold for dissolution in anticipation of the pressure to disband
itself. The Independent Commentators Association, set up to safeguard
media freedom, went into silent voluntary dissolution. The editorial
policies of news outlets had to toe Beijing's line, for example,
calling the Russian invasion of Ukraine as ``special military
operation'' instead of ``invasion'', and churned out commentaries that
blamed the U.S. for causing the Russian invasion.
c. lessons for the world
11. In a short span of 25 years the once free society soon
degenerated into an authoritarian one. For over a century, the city
that had served as the haven for political dissidents from China, now
becomes the exporter of political refugees itself. Once prized as the
freest places in the Chinese-speaking world, now experienced
unprecedented curtailment on freedom of speech and expression. The
Pearl of the Orient, a highly successful crossbreed of East and West
civilization, began to lose its luster, an irreparable loss to the
whole world.
12. Thus, the post-1997 history of Hongkong provides a classical
example of how, in time of peace, a free society based on the rule of
law is being imperceptibly converted into an authoritarian one in which
law becomes a tool of political repression. The world can learn from
Hongkong's experience and draw important lessons therefrom to avoid
begetting the same fate.
13. Worse still, we find with alarm that the tactics the CCP used
to convert Hongkong are being applied in Western democracies as well.
These familiar tactics, including propaganda, united front strategy,
party-building mechanism, infiltration, and intelligence to name the
most obvious, are clearly at work in the West. Our dreadful experience
is therefore relevant to the whole world.
14. Thus, the dreadful experience of Hongkong provides a wake-up
call for the whole world. Caring for Hongkong is not just for
Hongkong's own sake but for the sake of the whole world. The world
needs to learn from HK's lesson and take precautionary actions against
the stealthy erosion by the CCP leading to the collapse of the Western
societies. Since we witness first-hand how the fundamental pillars of a
free society can be easily destroyed by the CCP, we feel duty-bound to
explicitly state the obvious danger.
d. policy recommendations
15. On HK: Since HK is no longer a free society as envisaged in the
1992 U.S.-HK Policy Act, it might be appropriate to scrap that Act to
reflect the change since 1992. To address the urgent needs of today,
Congress should pass the provisions in Sec. 30303 (Hong Kong Freedom
and Choice provisions) and other Hong Kong-focused measures in H.R.
4521 in the conference committee.
16. On the U.S.: To stave off the CCP's erosion of the U.S.,
Congress should provide resources to:
Step up the surveillance of CCP-related activities in the
U.S.: activities that would potentially undermine a free society
(propaganda, united front strategy, underground party building,
intelligence gathering and infiltration into various level of the
administration) to protect the American political system.
Conduct research, under the CECC framework, into ways to
reverse the appeasement sentiments towards the CCP which is quite
rampant in the U.S. If appeasement towards the CCP is allowed to
develop unabated, then ``Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World'' (by Mark
Clifford) will be the result.
Prepared Statement of Samuel Bickett
the deterioration of hong kong's justice system
Hong Kong's justice system has been corrupted by Beijing's
authoritarian security apparatus. If a court case is of political
interest to Beijing or its agents in Hong Kong, a defendant has little
hope of receiving a fair trial, and often will spend years in prison
before receiving a verdict.
While few people of good faith would still defend the Hong Kong
Department of Justice and Police Force, there are those who insist the
judiciary continues to operate independently and in accordance with
law. The evidence shows otherwise.
Under the 2020 National Security Law, Beijing formally set up a
parallel justice system that it could control for certain political
cases; the outrages of this system have been well documented. But
relatively little is said about the deterioration of traditional common
law courts. While some low-level protest cases might still fly under
the radar, high profile political defendants wrongly charged in common
law courts with crimes like unlawful assembly, riot, and incitement
face almost as little hope as national security law defendants. In
these cases, unable to rely on the repressive language of the National
Security Law, prosecutors and judges instead manufacture evidence and
twist well-established legal principles to obtain convictions.
Many ordinary judges have been willing participants in the
dismantling of defendants' rights. The burden of proof has been turned
on its head; rather than requiring the prosecution to prove its case,
judges often declare that defendants haven't sufficiently proved their
innocence. Faced with inconvenient facts, judges falsify or
deliberately omit exculpatory evidence so frequently that those of us
working to document it can't keep up.
Even in non-NSL cases, judges often deny bail to defendants who
then languish in prison for years awaiting trial. The judiciary's
leadership has also ordered all judges to attend national security
seminars given by mainland officials, in which they are trained to view
court cases through a political lens.
Judges who follow the law are punished. When Beijing's state media
attacked several judges who acquitted protesters in early cases, the
Judiciary's leadership removed the judges from the bench and reassigned
them to desk duty. State actors harassed and threatened one judge so
severely that in 2021 he abruptly resigned and moved with his family to
the U.K. As for the DOJ, when Beijing passed the National Security Law
in Summer 2020, the Chief Prosecutor, David Leung--not a pro-democracy
activist by any stretch--was reportedly seen as not loyal enough to
Beijing and excluded from national security cases. He resigned and was
replaced by someone more willing to play Beijing's game. The message to
both judges and prosecutors has been crystal clear: get in line, or
suffer the consequences. Many ethical judges and prosecutors have left
their jobs, and those who remain are a mix of those who are too craven
to do their duty and those who enthusiastically embrace the
authoritarian regime.
Private lawyers are next: Both the Law Society and Bar Association
regularly issue screeds defending government positions while remaining
silent on government abuses, and both organizations recently launched
investigations into dozens of private lawyers for their work
representing protesters. One national security judge, Stanley Chan, has
suggested that lawyers who provided their business cards to protesters
could be criminally liable as accomplices. National security police
interrogated the former chair of the bar association, after which he
quickly moved to the U.K., and a number of esteemed barristers are in
prison without trial for political activity. One well-known human
rights solicitor decided to leave the city after being attacked in
state media; he was harassed by CCP reporters even as he walked through
the airport to his gate. Any remaining principled criminal lawyers will
either fall in line, leave the profession, or risk prison themselves.
The Legal Aid system for indigent defendants was also revamped last
year. Whereas previously a defendant could choose their lawyer, under
the new system the government assigns a lawyer for them.
Unsurprisingly, any lawyers seen as insufficiently loyal to the regime
are excluded.
many cases, including my own, illustrate
how the system has been co-opted
There are many non-NSL cases in which these abuses have been
documented, some of which I have written about in my Hong Kong Law &
Policy Newsletter. Two high profile incitement of unlawful assembly
cases illustrate this point:
Magistrate Amy Chan convicted activist lawyer Chow Hang
Tung of inciting others to unlawfully assemble in Victoria Park on the
June 4, 2021 Tiananmen Crackdown anniversary. The conviction was based
on a social media post in which Chow invited followers to ``light
candles in every corner of Hong Kong''--plainly, not an invitation to
come to Victoria Park. In her written ruling, Magistrate Chan simply
deleted this exculpatory line when she reprinted the social media post.
Judge Amanda Woodcock convicted Apple Daily founder Jimmy
Lai for inciting others to join a similar Tiananmen Crackdown vigil in
Victoria Park a year earlier. Lai had stood by silently at a press
event in which a pro-democracy organization, Hong Kong Alliance,
announced it would later walk to Victoria Park. Lai left and did not go
to the park. Woodcock ruled that because Lai ``is a prominent public
figure known to publicly share similar views as Hong Kong Alliance,''
and because at the press conference, he was ``surrounded and followed
by photographers and reporters,'' his very presence was an effort to
incite others to attend the gathering. In other words, Jimmy Lai was
guilty because he was Jimmy Lai.
My own case is another illustration. While many Hongkongers have
had it much worse than me, my experience shows how the system has been
co-opted and politicized by officials, often crossing into outright
criminal misconduct. At every stage, public servants failed me, failed
their oath, and failed Hong Kong.
In December 2019 while out shopping, I came across two men beating
and choking a teenager with a baton. As a crowd formed and several
people filmed the events, a British man asked them in English if they
were police. They both responded no. I then asked them in Chinese if
they were police. They both responded no in Chinese. When one of the
men, Yu Shu Sang, began to attack the British man, I grabbed at the
baton to stop him. After a scuffle, I took hold of one side of the
baton and detained him until the police arrived a few minutes later.
When they came, the police claimed that Yu was actually a police
officer. The whole incident was caught on cell phone video, and Yu
admitted on questioning that he had falsely accused the teen he was
beating of a crime he didn't commit, but they arrested me anyway and
let the attackers go free.
I spent two days in police custody, where I was tortured using a
common method in Hong Kong. The police put me in a room with the
temperature set at around 35 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) for
hours at a time. Periodically, an officer would pull me out of the room
shivering and turning blue, warm me up, and interrogate me. Each time,
I would refuse to answer and they would put me back in the freezing
room.
After obtaining bail, my lawyers wrote to the DOJ to urge them to
look at the evidence showing my innocence and drop the case. I still
held out hope that my legal colleagues in DOJ, sworn to the law just as
I was, would do the right thing. They did not. A court prosecutor wrote
back that they would pursue the charges, despite the evidence of my
innocence.
In Spring 2020, the prosecutor assigned to the case told my counsel
that she wanted to drop the charges, but that her superiors were
proceeding with the case because I was a foreigner who had
``embarrassed the police'' on camera. That prosecutor was then removed
from my case, and a private lawyer named Memi Ng was appointed to
prosecute me instead.
It became clear by this point that it was the police, not the DOJ,
calling the shots. At every hearing, two police officers sat behind Ms.
Ng and instructed her on even minor issues--a violation of both the
prosecution code and Hong Kong Law, which require prosecutors to act
independently of the police and on the basis of law. This court scene--
police officers quite literally whispering in the ear of the
prosecutor--is now routine in politically sensitive cases.
During the discovery phase, we discovered that the police had
destroyed CCTV camera footage showing an earlier attack on the teen by
Yu that I had not witnessed. The police also admitted in writing that
they had ``no evidence'' that Yu was a serving police officer, and only
months later, after we raised objections repeatedly, produced a
suspicious document ``delaying'' Yu's retirement date past the time of
the incident. We also discovered that the Police had called in their
only civilian witness, the second attacker Lo Chi Keung, before trial
and offered to ``award'' him with a cash bribe. I was unusually
persistent and rigorous in tracking down this rampant misconduct, but
if it happened to me, it is surely happening in other political cases.
At my May 2021 trial, Magistrate Arthur Lam disregarded the
inconvenient videos of the incident and police admissions at trial of
repeated lying, destruction of evidence, and witness tampering. He then
simply invented a new series of events, indifferent to how transparent
his misconduct was. He convicted me and sentenced me to four and a half
months in prison.
After nearly two months in prison, I was released on bail pending
appeal. Despite everything, I still held out hope for the judiciary,
and believed that an appellate judge would reverse the conviction.
I was wrong yet again. The court assigned the case--supposedly at
random--to a notorious national security judge, Esther Toh. In reality,
even common law case assignments are no longer random, and high-profile
political cases almost always go to a small circle of Beijing-friendly
judges. At the hearing, Judge Toh gave several speeches to the
assembled press, including one defending the right of police officers
to falsely accuse people of crimes they didn't commit, and another
proclaiming that it is never lawful to stop a police officer, even if
they're off duty and committing a violent crime. Judge Toh, of course,
upheld the conviction, and sent me back to prison for the rest of my
sentence.
On March 22 of this year, officers took me from the prison and
immediately deported me to the U.S. I am still appealing my conviction,
this time to the Court of Final Appeal. The Court has already refused
to hear my case once, without any justification for doing so. I am now
applying a second time for a hearing. But my previous optimism is
gone--I expect nothing but obfuscation and rejection from the Court.
final observations and proposals
Those holding out hope that courageous officials in the justice
system will step up to save Hong Kong's rule of law must accept the
reality: Hong Kong's much-lauded justice system is lost. Going forward,
officials will no doubt point to an occasional acquittal as evidence of
their fairness, but there is no chance of acquittals in any case that
would risk a reaction from political authorities in Beijing.
For businesses who think the compromised legal system won't affect
their interests, one only needs to look across the border to Mainland
China to see that this cannot be the case. In the Mainland, business
disputes involving a foreign company rarely turn in favor of the
foreigners, and often result in not just financial losses but exit bans
for foreign employees, sometimes for years. If prosecutors and judges
have embraced the principle that cases of interest to Beijing must be
decided in Beijing's favor, how could it not affect, say, a civil
dispute between a U.S. bank's Hong Kong branch and China Construction
Bank, or a creditor claim filed in Hong Kong against an insolvent
Chinese real estate company? A justice system is either independent of
political authorities or it is not--there is no half-way option.
Hong Kong will not be restored to its former glory anytime soon.
There is, however, much that the U.S. Government can do to at least
increase the costs of Hong Kong's crackdown and deter similar action in
the future.
Human rights (Magnitsky) sanctions: While the U.S. has
sanctioned a number of top Hong Kong officials, this does little to
curb the serious abuses of officials in the justice system further down
the chain. I urge Congress and the White House to issue sanctions
against midlevel prosecutors and police officials who have misused the
court system to unjustly imprison perceived dissidents. A wide net cast
low enough into the ranks just might deter some civil servants from
further perverting the justice system. And while any government that
values judicial independence should be very cautious about sanctioning
judges, there is simply no question that some judges have abandoned
judicial independence, including the Chief Justice and the known
National Security Law judges. These judges merit consideration for
sanctions as well.
Penalties against U.S. companies for facilitating human
rights abuses: Ultimately, only measures that increase the risk to
businesses of investing in authoritarian regimes can curb Beijing's
excesses in the Chinese mainland and its colonies. Industry-based
sanctions such as those issued against Russia in 2014 are one way of
doing this, but lesser measures can also have an impact. One option
that could be very effective is a law in the mold of the Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act that prohibits U.S. persons, including U.S.
companies, from facilitating serious human rights abuses, and subjects
violators to civil and criminal penalties. I would also urge that any
such law go beyond the FCPA in permitting private civil actions against
offenders, which would enable private plaintiffs and attorneys to take
up much of the work of enforcing the law.
Immigration pathways: I urge Congress to finally provide
a special immigration pathway for Hongkongers to live and work in the
United States, and eventually obtain citizenship. As our allies in the
U.K., Canada, and Australia have moved forward with such pathways,
Hongkongers have moved to these places in droves. These Hongkongers are
by and large well-educated, relatively wealthy, and of working age.
They will make exceptional contributions wherever they land, and it is
America's loss that we are not doing more to attract them here.
conclusion
To be frank, the U.S. Government has, to this point, done far too
little to stem the rise of CCP authoritarianism. To illustrate how far
we are from the mindset we need to be in: As we speak, just a short
walk away the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art is co-hosting a
Hong Kong film festival with the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office,
Hong Kong's principal propaganda arm abroad. If even U.S. Government
entities here in the nation's capital haven't yet gotten the message
that these are not people we can work with, how can we expect U.S.
businesses to stop cooperating with the regime? How can we demand it of
our allies?
Finally, I urge all members of Congress to remember that this
country's credibility abroad on issues of democracy and human rights is
inextricably tied to whether our leaders are seen as respecting
democracy and human rights at home. The rhetoric and actions of some
members of Congress related to the last presidential election have
severely hurt America's influence abroad, and given our adversaries in
China and elsewhere ammunition as they seek to spread authoritarianism
across the world. I urge all of America's leaders to remember that
their actions on domestic issues have consequences well beyond the
country's borders.
Thank you for your time and attention.
______
Prepared Statement of Senator Jeff Merkley
Good morning. Today's hearing of the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China entitled ``The Dismantling of Hong Kong's Civil
Society'' will come to order.
Earlier this month, Hong Kong marked the 25th anniversary of the
British handover to the People's Republic of China. Instead of
celebrating the ``high degree of autonomy'' and ``universal suffrage''
promised to the people of Hong Kong, this anniversary serves as an
occasion for Chinese leader Xi Jinping to go to Hong Kong and flaunt
the control he now wields over the city.
It's now been two years since implementation of Hong Kong's
draconian National Security Law. In these two years, authorities
completed the transformation of Hong Kong from an open society into a
city gripped by fear--fear of the mainland's authoritarian repression.
A city that once boasted a vibrant civil society and pro-democratic
institutions saw these pillars of what made Hong Kong so special
systematically dismantled. The Hong Kong government now jails
protesters and politicians, shuts down independent media, and silences
critics, even criminalizing dissent. At least 10,500 Hong Kongers have
been arrested for political and protest-related offenses. No fewer than
123 individuals face national security charges and will likely be tried
with few or no due process protections and with possible extradition to
mainland China. At least 65 civil society organizations have shut down
or left Hong Kong for fear of prosecution under the National Security
Law. Today, sadly, that once-vibrant civil society is crushed, muted,
and scattered.
Today's hearing offers a microcosm of what's happened and what
remains. Our witnesses bring a deep history in civil society in Hong
Kong, as well as experience being persecuted, and having to continue
their work in exile, in Tokyo, in London, in Los Angeles, and here in
Washington, DC. Like so many, they continue to fight for the people of
Hong Kong and its once-proud institutions.
In recent months, this Commission has heard from dozens of Hong
Kong's true patriots: journalists, human rights advocates, students,
former legislators, social workers, religious clergy, nongovernmental
organization staff, doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, and trade union
organizers. In the coming days, we will release a report on what those
members of civil society have experienced, largely in their own words.
Today's hearing offers a glimpse into that bleak picture. The
Chinese government's policy of crushing resistance turns Hong Kong into
a city subject to centralized political control like other cities in
China. The civil society voices we've heard from view authorities as
co-opting those who can be bought, constraining those who can be
intimidated, and cracking down on those who cannot be silenced.
As we hear some of those stories today, I look forward to learning
from our witnesses what we can do to support the civil society that
remains in Hong Kong and organizations that now operate elsewhere on
behalf of the people of Hong Kong.
I look forward to exploring with the Biden administration the
additional steps that can be taken to hold accountable those
responsible for undermining Hong Kong's autonomy, basic rights, and
rule of law. Later today, the Commission will release a staff analysis
on the role of Hong Kong prosecutors in these abuses. We hope that this
analysis, like the work we do documenting political prisoner cases
generally, will shine a light in a dark place and point to a better
path ahead. Without objection, these supplementary materials will be
entered into the record.
______
Prepared Statement of Representative James P. McGovern
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing on the erosion of
civil society in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong has long been a particular interest of this Commission.
From the start, 20 years ago, our annual report has included a discrete
Hong Kong chapter. This is the sixth hearing on Hong Kong, or featuring
a witness on Hong Kong, in my three and a half years as House co-chair.
The reason for this heightened attention is regrettable, however.
The changes in this time have been dramatic. Three years ago this
summer, the world witnessed massive protests in the streets of Hong
Kong. The trigger was an extradition treaty that put residents at risk
of being forcibly sent to the mainland. The context was the steady
erosion of democratic norms under Chinese government and Communist
Party influence.
For our September 2019 hearing on the protests, witnesses flew in
from Hong Kong. They would not be able to do that today. One witness
was Joshua Wong, a leader of the pro-democracy movement, making his
second appearance before the CECC. Today he is in prison on political
charges. Another was Denise Ho, a democracy activist and singer. She
was arrested and released on bail, and still faces charges of the crime
of supporting democracy.
In 2020, the central government passed the National Security Law,
providing a ``legal'' basis for political persecution of those deemed
oppositional to the Party's priorities. Further, Hong Kong authorities
have imposed measures aligned with the ideological priorities of the
central government. These include removing books from libraries,
pushing ``patriotic education'' in schools, revising history to suit
Party narratives, and suppressing LGBTQ voices.
These impulses are not exclusive to Hong Kong or China. We see such
evidence of authoritarian creep in many places at home and abroad.
Today we hear from citizens and residents of Hong Kong who have
been first-hand witnesses to this extraordinary change. The fact that
none of our witnesses remains in Hong Kong is indicative of the
crackdown. We invite them to share their stories and to speak for their
friends and colleagues still in Hong Kong who are not able to speak for
themselves.
We not only want to hear about the state of civil society, but to
receive recommendations on what U.S. policymakers can do to support
those who still desire democracy and human rights. I also welcome your
recommendation on whether the U.S. should create humanitarian pathways
for those fleeing repression in Hong Kong.
Lastly, let us not forget the prisoners of conscience who are in
jail or on trial in Hong Kong--Joshua Wong, Jimmy Lai, Cyd Ho, Claudia
Mo, and so many others. We continue to stand with them and to advocate
for their release.
Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know the staff is working on
analytical products in conjunction with this hearing and I look forward
to their publication. I look forward to the testimony.
Submissions for the Record
----------
Submission of Senator Ossoff
List of Journalists and Press Freedom Defenders
Arrested in Hong Kong
1. Jimmy Lai Chee-ying
2. Claudia Mo Man-ching
3. Gwyneth Ho Kwai-lam
4. Frankie Fung Tat-chun
5. Wan Yiu-sing (Giggs)
6. Cheung Kim Hung
7. Ryan Law Wai-kwong
8. Lam Man-chung
9. Yeung Ching-kee
10. Fung Wai-kong
11. Chan Pui-man
12. Patrick Lam Shiu-tung
13. Chung Pui-kuen
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Witness Biographies
Patrick Poon, visiting researcher, Institute for Comparative Law at
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan
Patrick Poon is a visiting researcher at the Institute for
Comparative Law at Meiji University, and advisor to the 29 Principles,
a U.K.-based organization supporting lawyers facing human rights
oppression. In his years in Hong Kong, Poon was a court reporter at the
South China Morning Post, China Labour Bulletin, China Human Rights
Lawyers Concern Group, Independent Chinese PEN Center, and Amnesty
International. He is well versed in not just Hong Kong-based civil
society organizations, but also China-focused human rights
organizations that have sought shelter in Hong Kong, and international
human rights organizations that have monitored developments in both
Hong Kong and mainland China.
Fermi Wong, founder and former executive director, Hong Kong Unison
Fermi Wong is the founder and former executive director of Hong
Kong Unison, which promotes equality for ethnic minorities. She set up
her own civil society organization with private funding, avoiding
dependence on government funding and the consequent inability to
challenge government policies. Her work has been featured in Time
magazine, the South China Morning Post magazine, and Hong Kong Free
Press. In the U.K., she seeks to promote Hong Kong civil society abroad
as co-founder and director of the Hong Kong Umbrella Community and
Mingle Cafe, and as co-founder and consultant for Green Bean Media.
Ching Cheong, veteran journalist
Ching Cheong worked for the state-owned Wenwei Po newspaper for 15
years, acquiring knowledge of the Chinese Communist Party's
interference in Hong Kong affairs ever since the Sino-British Joint
Declaration was signed. He is extensively featured in a recent
Economist article entitled ``How a Free and Open Hong Kong Became a
Police State.'' Before he left Hong Kong, Ching was involved with
independent media and journalist organizations.
Samuel Bickett, human rights lawyer and Fellow at Georgetown Center
for Asian Law
Samuel Bickett is a human rights lawyer focused on the rule of law
and civil liberties in Hong Kong, a Fellow at the Georgetown Center for
Asian Law, and author of the ``Hong Kong Law & Policy'' newsletter. He
was a corporate sanctions/corporate corruption lawyer based in Hong
Kong from 2013 to 2021. He was arrested during the 2019 protests and
convicted, imprisoned twice, and then deported from Hong Kong earlier
this year.
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