Dear,

Let me begin by saluting the courage of Chow Hang-tung. Her arrest has brightened the name of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China. For three days in a row, Chow’s face was on BBC.com together with the emptiness in Victoria Park and the omnipresent candlelight or flashlight emitted by mobile phones outside it, a loud reminder to the world of what is going on in our city. A face matters because there is a real story of flesh and blood behind it. On the 4th of June last year, Hong Kong created its own “2064”. This year has marked a new milestone. Call it “the June Fourth of Hong Kong” or “6432”, it is another chapter in history. All this has been the result of the SAR government’s excessive acts of suppression taken out of fear.

On 5th June, Chow was released. The next day, she lit a candle at a vigil to mourn for Li Wangyang, a Chinese activist who “would rather lose his head than turn back” for the 1989 pro-democracy movement. The government wants to ban vigils, but how is that possible?

I still remember how the news of Li Wangyang’s “passive suicide” shocked Hong Kong. Numerous groups staged protests, marching from Victoria Park through Queen’s Road to the central government’s liaison office at Sheung Wan. Standing in the street, I saw junior secondary school students who were so small in stature holding aloft the flags of “Scholarism” walk past. That year was my last year in the Legislative Council. The picture on the last page of the concluding annual report showed me standing in the legislative chamber and making a speech with no one on the bench behind me except for an enlarged black-and-white photo of Li Wangyang with the words “give me back Li Wangyang”. There had been a memorial ceremony for him on the street that day. Everyone had brought a white chrysanthemum and placed it in front of his memorial tablet. Everyone supposed to be sitting behind me had gone, with only me staying in the legislative chamber. When compiling the annual report, I put this image on the last page so that voters in my Legal functional constituency would always remember it.

Why do we fight for democracy and the rule of law? It is to prevent people from dying unjust deaths as Li Wangyang did. Lamentably, after nine years, we seem to be even further away from having democracy.

It has just been reported that Lady Hale, former President of the UK Supreme Court and a non-permanent judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong, is not seeking reappointment on the Hong Kong court after the end of her term in July. Her words were “I don’t wish to be reappointed”. She did not say whether the other Britain judges should stay or go, although she did say that there are “all sorts of question marks up in the air” concerning the National Security Law. What I think is the worthiest of our thought is that she said, “At the moment Hong Kong has an independent judiciary”, and “you can have the rule of law even though sometimes the substantive content is not what you would want it to be”. However, she also said that “there is no necessary correlation unless you add to your description of the rule of law… the protection of fundamental human rights.” She added, “If you don’t have the protection of fundamental human rights well then maybe your adherence to the rule of law is diminished.”

What she has said could not be clearer. If the rule of law does not protect human rights, it might not affect adherence to the rule of law concerning commercial matters. This might be exactly the objective that the government wants to achieve, and some non-permanent judges might accept this. After all, is it not true that the economy and trade are very important too? If that is the case, we will not care too much about whether non-permanent judges from overseas will stay or go. But if you ask me, I have always argued that this is a naïve view. If the rule of law does not protect fundamental human rights, the ultimate result will be the absence of the rule of law for economic and trade matters.

Several days before the 4th of June this year, someone gifted me a dainty “Never Forget June Fourth” lightbulb. On the night of the 4th of June, I twisted it on and placed it on a street-facing windowsill so that every passerby would see it when they raised their heads. Small as it was, it stayed on for the entire night. The lightbulb is tiny but quietly inexhaustible, just like every one of us.

Do not go on a fast just because others are doing this, please. You are already too thin.

10.6.2021

(Margaret Ng Ngoi-yee is a barrister, writer and columnist in Hong Kong. She was a member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong from 1995-1997; 1998-2012.)

This article is translated from Chinese by Apple Daily.

Click here for Chinese version

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