Last week, right after the U.S. announced sanctions against top officials of China’s legislature for its enactment of the national security law (NSL) in Hong Kong, Jimmy Lai, the city’s media tycoon, was charged with foreign collusion offences and endangering national security under the NSL. Back in August, after the U.S. announced sanctions against 11 Beijing and Hong Kong officials, Jimmy Lai and his colleagues were arrested and the headquarters of Apple Daily was raided. It has become crystal clear that Lai is now a hostage in Beijing’s eyes and the charges pressed against him are “retaliation” to counteract the U.S. sanctions.

Beijing is accustomed to hostage diplomacy, but holding Jimmy Lai hostage is more than just a usual tactic under Beijing’s hostage diplomacy. Hostage diplomacy is the taking of hostages for diplomatic purposes. It usually manifests as foreigners being arrested on trumped-up charges and then held as bargaining chips. The detention of two Canadians in response to the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, Chief Financial Officer of Huawei, and the arrest of Australian news anchor Cheng Lei are examples. But in the case of Lai, Beijing is holding a Hong Kong citizen hostage to counteract another country. Lai is not the first case of Beijing holding Chinese dissidents hostage. In previous decades, Wei Jingsheng and Wang Dan were bargaining chips in Sino-U.S. relations. Liu Xiaobo once criticized the tactics as cruel and nasty, and his wife Liu Xia has also been made a bargaining chip in Sino-German diplomacy. The 12 Hong Kong youths now detained in Shenzhen is another example.

It worries me that activists and protesters who are now under detention or serving their sentences will also become bargaining chips of China. Apart from pressing more charges against Hong Kongers, China can extradite defendants to China under the NSL. On November 25, 2020, Carrie Lam for the first time publicly made a point that participants of the anti-extradition bill protest movement are anti-government by nature and their actions could be considered as violations of the NSL. Tam Tak-chi was not arrested under the NSL, but his case is now handled by a judge designated to handle national security cases. It is possible that Tam’s case will set a precedent for further cases related to the protest movement, exposing more protesters to the risks of being held hostages, put behind bars or extradited to China.

Contrary to Carrie Lam’s recent claim that “Hong Kong is now very safe”, Hong Kong is now a dangerous place, for both locals and foreigners. A place that uses its own citizens as bargaining chips in counteracting sanctions by another country; a place governed by a regime that holds foreigners hostages to gain advantage could never be a good place to live in. The cases of Lai and others will not only draw international attention, but also silence Hong Kongers from further criticizing Beijing. The latter is the exact effect Beijing would like to see.

Beijing rules Hong Kong by fear. It is under the impression that if the regime is cruel and nasty enough to make us afraid, it will be able to gain full control over us, as we will be overwhelmed by fear and kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party. To their dismay, the scare tactics have been proven wrong again and again. At a glance, there seems to be no more protests and rallies on the street, no one waving flags with “anti-government” slogans. But things will never be the same again after what we went through last year. Police brutality will not go unnoticed, the pain of losing fellow protesters will not be eased, and the rage of Hong Kongers who witness the sufferings of others will not die down. The cruelty of holding Lai and other activists hostages will only create a stronger opposition later on.

(Glacier Kwong, born and raised in Hong Kong, became a digital rights and political activist at the age of 15. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Law and working on the course for Hong Kong in Germany. Her work has been published on Washington Post, TIME, etc.)

We invite you to join the conversation by submitting columns to our opinion section: [email protected]

Apple Daily reserves the right to refuse, abridge, alter or edit guest opinion columns for accuracy, length, clarity, and style, and the right to withdraw and withhold columns based on the discretion of our editorial page editors.

The opinions of the writers do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editorial board.

---------------------------------

Apple Daily’s all-new English Edition is now available on the mobile app: bit.ly/2yMMfQE

To download the latest version,

iOS: bit.ly/AD_iOS

Android: bit.ly/AD_android

Or search Appledaily in App Store or Google Play