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A Case for Hong Kong Independence (Joseph Long)

蘋果日報 2020/06/27 08:58



A strong sense of impending doom has descended upon Hong Kong since last month, when the Chinese National People’s Congress, the despotic regime’s rubber-stamp legislature, declared that they would authorize the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) to promulgate a national security law in the territory, seventeen years after the last Article 23 push failed.

According to the draft summary published last week, the law would see the establishment of a national security commission headed by the chief executive, Beijing’s puppet in the city-state. The commission would “shoulder the major responsibility to maintain national security”, and would be subject to “supervision” by the central Chinese government. Beijing would also set up its own office in Hong Kong and appoint to the commission an advisor to “offer consultative opinions” for national security purposes. The tasks of the office would, according to the draft, “include analysing and judging the security situation in Hong Kong, [and] suggestions on strategies and policies to maintain national security”; it would also “supervise, instruct, co-ordinate with, and support the Hong Kong government in fulfilling its national security laws [and] collect and analyse intelligence, and handle national security cases in accordance with the law.”

Despite that the summary did not say explicitly whether suspects could face extradition to mainland China, Chinese security organs will, “under specific circumstances”, have the power to “exercise jurisdiction” over national security cases. Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, meanwhile, will be handed the power to handpick a panel of judges who are loyal to the regime to hear prosecutions under the proposed law. To add insult to the injury, not only is the scope of the proposed law—which will create still-to-be defined crimes of treason, secession, sedition, and subversion—not properly delineated, sources close to Beijing have revealed that the full draft of the national security law will not be made public until after its passage.

Andrew Li Kwoknang, the former Chief Justice of Hong Kong, wrote in the South China Morning Post on Monday (June 22) that the power of Beijing to “exercise jurisdiction” over national security cases would mean those cases would be dealt with and tried in mainland China. If this were the case then it would truly be the final nail in the coffin for Hong Kong.

It is self-explanatory that the promulgation of the new security law will irretrievably wreak havoc on the autonomy and civil liberties of Hong Kong. “Crimes” such as secession and subversion have been extensively used in China to lock up dissidents and ethnic minorities, including the Uighurs and Tibetans, over the years. With the conferral of power on Beijing’s puppet in Hong Kong to handpick judges to hear national security cases and the subordination of existing law to the national security bill, the promulgation of the new law, in practice, will effectively open the back door for Beijing to set up a parallel judiciary in the territory and usurp entirely the power of adjudication from Hong Kong courts. Local law enforcement agencies will be reduced to nothing but marionettes of Beijing, acting upon the orders of the Chinese state and serving, together with their Chinese counterparts (known as “Guo-an”) stationed in Hong Kong, as mere pawns with the sole purpose of subjugating Hong Kong citizens to the party’s wrath. It stands to reason that Beijing’s intent is to crush dissent in Hong Kong at any cost, even if it means rule by fear comparable to that of a Stalinist regime.

Despite the strenuous efforts on Beijing’s part to play down the threat of the proposed law to Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy, there is no denying that the promulgation of the new security law is the most flagrant violation yet of the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the principle of “one country, two systems” it promises. The preparedness of Beijing to crush dissent in Hong Kong demonstrates precisely the futility and injudiciousness in placing one’s trust in the Chinese state to deliver on its promises, which are just about as credible as the words of Shakespeare’s Prospero in The Tempest. As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly: Britain made the mistake of entrusting Hong Kong and its five million citizens to a scoundrel in 1984, and over and over again after 1997 every time when Britain urged China to keep its promises over Hong Kong—unsurprisingly to no avail. We should not make the same blunder again.

Having caught on to the fact that China is but a devious and habitual-lying scoundrel, one should realize that to ask for Beijing to keep its promise of “one country, two systems” would be about as futile an endeavor as performing the Sisyphean task of pushing water uphill with a rake. Even if Hong Kongers did manage to convince Beijing to withdraw its plan to promulgate the new security law, and went as far as to secure universal suffrage and a firm assurance over the rule of law in Hong Kong, it would not mean a thing as long as Beijing has the arbitrary and absolute power to take them all away at will. As such, Hong Kongers are but left with the Hobson’s choice of independence.

Unrealistic as it might sound, theoretically, there is a strong legal case for the independence of Hong Kong: by China’s own admission, the Sino-British Joint Declaration is a “historical document” and thus no longer valid. The fact, however, is that Hong Kong was handed over to China by Britain on the condition that the territory’s way of life would remain until 2047. If the joint declaration was void, or, as China contended, no longer valid, then there would not be any legal basis for China to continue to rule over Hong Kong, given that the Treaty of Nanking and the First Convention of Peking—which the Joint Declaration superseded—stated very clearly that Hong Kong and Kowloon were ceded to Britain in perpetuity. This will be a good place to start the construction of a theoretical framework for Hong Kong independence. In fact, every Hong Konger who is blessed with the gift of common sense, I believe, should seriously consider the option of independence, however unrealistic it may sound, for after all, as it transpired, a free and democratic Hong Kong is possible if and only if it is independent and, above all, unencumbered by the arbitrary and dictatorial dominance of the north.

(Joseph Long is a London-based writer from Hong Kong. He is a Philosophy graduate of King’s College London and has been a member of the Society of Authors in the United Kingdom since February 2020.)
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