After a year-long turmoil caused by Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s disastrous attempt to enact the Extradition Bill, which has led to the biggest crisis since Britain handed the colony over to Chinese rule in 1997, Hong Kong is bracing itself for even more ferocious confrontations.

The palpable tension is caused by the Chinese Communist Party’s surprise decision to enact a National Security Law for Hong Kong, and the proposal was passed by China’s rubber stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), on May 28. Before that, no one in Hong Kong had had any idea it was going to happen.

According to Article 23 of the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini constitution, the city “shall enact laws on its own” regarding national security. Hong Kong has failed to do so since 1997 out of fear of losing the freedoms and the rule of law. In the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic, Beijing decided to foist it on the 7.5 million people. It is a clear violation of the Basic Law.

So far, little about the National Security Law has been revealed, except that the offences include secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference in Hong Kong affairs. Details will be drafted by the Standing Committee of the NPC, which will meet on June 22. A National Security agency will also be set up in Hong Kong.

Many Hong Kong people fear the National Security Law will curtail their freedoms and erode the city’s autonomy. Such concern is shared by many people in the international community, including Britain and the US. It also spells the end of the Communist Party’s “one country, two systems” policy, which has enabled Hong Kong to flourish as a free, vibrant and safe international business and financial city.

The Communist Party said the law is needed to counter attempts by some Hong Kong people and foreign forces to turn the city into a base for subverting and overthrowing the Communist Party. This is blatantly untrue. Most Hong Kong people do not support independence, but want Beijing to keep the pledge of “one country, two systems” made in the Sino-British Joint Declaration.

There is no doubt the crackdown on dissenting views and police beating up protesters with impunity have made more people support violent protests and even independence. The year-long bitter conflicts have split the city asunder. The National Security Law is like driving a truck through the “one country, two systems” fire wall, resulting in naked confrontation with the Communist way of life.

In Mainland China, there is almost complete lawlessness, lack of human rights and freedoms, and little personal safety. People who dare to speak their mind are punished or killed. Dissidents and human rights defenders have disappeared, were tortured and locked up for long periods, with no access to their family members and lawyers. Family members are often implicated -- they lose their jobs, children cannot go to school and are kept under surveillance. The plight of more than 1 million Uyghurs locked up in Xinjiang detention camps is both heart breaking and terrifying.

Such barbaric treatments scare the daylight out of many people. Although Hong Kong is not a democracy, the people enjoy human rights, freedoms, the rule of law and personal safety, more so than many people who live in so-called democratic countries. However things started to go horribly wrong when President Xi Jin-ping came to power in 2012, as he began to tighten his grip on the Chinese people and on Hong Kong. In June 2014, Beijing published a White Paper on “one country, two systems”, emphasizing it has comprehensive jurisdiction over Hong Kong. Many saw it as the beginning of the end of Hong Kong’s “high degree of autonomy.”

As if things were not bad enough, Tam Yiu-chung, a Hong Kong delegate to the NPC Standing Committee and former Chair of the pro-Beijing political party Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), has suggested that anyone who opposes the National Security Law should not be allowed to stand for election to the Legislative Council (LegCo), Hong Kong’s law-making body. If his proposal is accepted, there will be no opposition member in the LegCo. Hong Kong will be a one-party city, like the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a one-party state.

Losing no time in completing the abolition of “one country, two systems”, Patrick Nip, Secretary for the Civil Service Bureau, announced at a DAB forum on June 7 that Hong Kong civil servants are also civil servants of the PRC, and their freedom of expression is not absolute. This contravenes Article 99 of the Basic Law, which said public servants must be responsible to the Hong Kong government. Nip’s remark is like detonating a bomb, warning that civil servants will be turned into cadres of the Communist Party. They will no longer be politically neutral, a core value of our system.

Many people have found the mounting tension unbearable, and scrambled to find a way out. Many have flocked to open foreign currency bank accounts and discussed emigration and rights of British Nationality (Overseas) (BNO) passports holders. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s remarks on allowing BNO passport holders longer stay in the UK as a pathway to citizenship came as a surprise, as few people had had expectation that the British government would do anything.

What Mr Johnson said is a step in the right direction. But no details are available and it cannot set the Hong Kong people’s hearts at ease. I hope the British government would do the honorable thing by giving Hong Kong people British citizenship, as a sign that they have not been abandoned. As I said to then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in December 1984, handing over 5 million people into the hands of a communist dictatorship is morally indefensible. Now our worst fear is coming to pass, I hope the British people and the political parties will support giving Hong Kong people a lifeboat, somewhere to go to when things go horribly wrong.

(Emily Lau, Chairperson, International Affairs Committee of the Democratic Party)

---------------------------------
Apple Daily’s all-new English Edition is now available on the mobile app
To know more: https://bit.ly/2yMMfQE
Apple Daily mobile app latest version DOWNLOAD NOW