Diplomacy for a semi-autonomous city is tricky business. Do you woo investors, dispel democratic anxieties, or crack down on dissent? If you are John Lee Ka-chiu, you do it all, and you do it without mincing words. Last year, during the “Hello Hong Kong” campaign, the city’s Chief Executive was seen gesturing his arms open, welcoming foreign visitors to a “world city like no other”. On the sidelines, he doggedly pursued “street rats”. Mr. Lee issued a bounty of HK$1 million against eight pro-democracy activists living abroad. They were wanted, dead or alive, under the Beijing-imposed national security law.

The eight Mr. Lee referred to are part of the ‘Hong Kong 47’— the 47 activists, academics, and politicians jailed or forced into exile since 2021. On May 30, a Hong Kong court found 14 activists guilty of attempting to “paralyse Hong Kong’s government” and to “topple the city’s leader”. The landmark prosecution is carried out under Mr. Lee’s leadership that began in 2022.

Hong Kong’s fifth Chief Executive has had humble beginnings. He was born into a middle-class family in Guangzhou and grew up in public housing, experiencing “first-hand hardships faced by the grassroots community”, Mr. Lee said in a campaign speech.

He attended the prestigious Wah Yan College run by Jesuit priests. His classmates and teachers described him as “obedient” and “result-oriented”, one who kept a low profile, according to a South China Morning Post report. The young Mr. Lee passed an opportunity to study engineering due to “family reasons”. In 1977, when Hong Kong was still a British colony, Mr. Lee, then 20 years, joined the police force. He was “known as an anglophile during the colonial rule”, Reuters reported earlier.

A policing background separates Mr. Lee from his predecessors, who rose from civil service or had ties to the business community. The 66-year-old spent more than four decades tackling security challenges. He started as a probationary inspector; moving up the ranks to become a deputy commissioner in 2010, a secretary for security in 2017, and by 2021, he was chosen the chief secretary for administration — the second most powerful job in Hong Kong. Mr. Lee had earned a reputation for being “notoriously difficult to deal with” and seemed hostile to those who raised questions, former lawmaker and activist in exile Nathan Law Kwun-chung told CNN.

Mr. Lee’s “sense of justice” began when he was robbed as a school student, which to him was a lesson in being a law-abiding citizen, according to the Global Times. The learning stuck.

When pro-democracy activists protested the controversial (and now withdrawn) extradition Bill in 2019, Mr. Lee defended his former police colleagues, who fired tear gas canisters, water cannons and rubber bullets at protesters. The protesters were “radicals” sowing “terror”, stopped only by the “courageous” police force, he said. Pro-Beijing lawmakers appreciated his “leadership skills” in handling the mass pro-democracy protests and the pandemic

Rewriting rule of law

The Basic Law, the city’s mini constitution, guarantees civil liberties, free speech, and independent judiciary in the former British Colony. The National Security Law rewrites the rule of law, and gives the government more power to crush dissent, critics fear. The U.S. has placed Mr. Lee on a sanctions list for undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy.

In 2022, Mr. Lee was the unopposed choice to be Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, handpicked by an election committee comprising Beijing loyalists. The appointment was a “reward for loyalty”, said Joseph Cheng, a retired Hong Kong academic.

Detractors also point out his lack of expertise in governance which would impact his ability to tackle the city’s housing and poverty issues. Mr. Lee approved new domestic security laws in March this year, an expansion of the NSL, which experts fear could dampen Hong Kong’s prospects of becoming a hub for international business.

Hong Kong’s Chief Executives traditionally juggle opposing forces — balancing Hong Kong’s desire for autonomy alongside China’s vision for the city. Mr. Lee’s governance bends towards the latter; national security would take priority “above all else”, he had said. Mr. Lee’s 2022 manifesto vowed to bolster security legislation, introduce a “national identity” education and enact a “fake news” law. The National Security Law (which prohibits treason, secession, sedition or subversion against Beijing) has “restored peace” and was necessary to guard against “undercurrents that try to create troubles”, he said. When asked about law and order, Mr. Lee, in an interview with China Daily, said the “national security threat is well under control”, with “patriots” like himself administering Hong Kong.

What drives Mr. Lee? He quoted a Cantonese saying during a press meet. “When we draw a cartoon character, we should draw its intestines as well”, he said, suggesting his attention to details while drawing up initiatives. The Chief Executive has earned the sobriquet of the cartoon ‘Pickachu’ on social media. It’s a play on his Cantonese name Ka-Chiu, encoded with the implication of his subservience to Beijing. Mr. Lee reworked a detail to counter this criticism. Marketing flooded online channels with a blue cartoon called ‘Brother Chiu’, an affectionate salutation for a respectable figure in Hong Kong.

This tough line earned him praise from the higher-ups. Last December, China’s President Xi Jinping said Mr. Lee’s work has “consolidated the general trend turning Hong Kong from chaos to order”, and that Hong Kong “now sits on a path to prosperity”.

Photo of Zheng Zeguang, Chinese Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Britain’s foreign ministry has summoned the Chinese ambassador after three men were charged with spying for Hong Kong, the Telegraph newspaper reported on May 14.

The ambassador will be challenged by officials over the allegations that three men had assisted Hong Kong’s foreign intelligence service in Britain, the newspaper said. The men appeared in a London Court on May 13.

Britain’s Foreign Office had no immediate comment.

The men are accused of helping the Hong Kong agency between December and May by “agreeing to undertake information gathering, surveillance and acts of deception” in Britain, according to the charges.

The Chinese Embassy in London accused Britain of fabricating the charges and said it had no right to interfere in Hong Kong’s affairs.

Hong Kong was under British rule for 156 years before reverting to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.

On March 19th, the Hong Kong government passed a new national security law that has been criticised by several Western countries and rights groups

The Safeguarding National Security law revises the existing regulations and penalties, and adds five new categories of offences — treason, insurrection, espionage and theft of state secrets, sabotaging national security, and external interference

Some of these offences carry penalties of imprisonment, even up to life

The law, also known as Article 23, was passed after a rushed public consultation

What is Hong Kong’s Article 23?

Article 23 of Hong Kong’s constitution, which came into force after Hong King was handed over to China from Britain in 1997, obliges the government to enact domestic national security legislation.

In recent years, particularly in 2019, Hong Kong has witnessed a series of anti-government protests, following escalating tensions between the pro-Beijing ruling elite and pro-democracy civil society

The protests were aimed against China’s alleged attempts to reduce Hong Kong’s autonomy.

In 2020, the Chinese government imposed a separate national security law on Hong Kong, citing the city’s delay in acting on Article 23.

That law was quickly used to further crush dissent and target figures of the pro-democracy movement.

The Bill was introduced in the city’s Opposition-free legislature on March 8th for examination following a month-long public consultation. It was unanimously approved by lawmakers on March 19th.

The Hong Kong government claimed that its public consultation showed 99% support for the proposals.

Read more here

Washington:

The United States announced on Friday that it was “taking steps” to put fresh visa curbs on Hong Kong officials responsible for cracking down on rights in the Chinese city, days after a new national security law came into force.

In a statement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that over the past year, Beijing has “continued to take actions against Hong Kong’s promised high degree of autonomy, democratic institutions, and rights and freedoms.”

This crackdown, he said, includes the recent passage of “Article 23,” a national security law targeting treason, insurrection, espionage, and theft of state secrets, among other crimes.

In response to “intensifying repression” and restrictions on “civil society, media, and dissenting voices,” the State Department “is taking steps to impose new visa restrictions on multiple Hong Kong officials,” the statement added.

Blinken did not elaborate on the visa measures to be taken, nor the officials to be targeted.

His announcement comes after Washington’s annual review of Hong Kong’s autonomy, a status promised by Beijing when Britain handed over the city in 1997.

“This year, I have again certified that Hong Kong does not warrant treatment under U.S. laws in the same manner as the laws were applied to Hong Kong before July 1, 1997,” Blinken said.

Washington has previously imposed visa restrictions and sanctions on Hong Kong officials it accuses of eroding the rights and freedoms that differentiate the city from the rest of China.

In 2020, the United States also revoked the financial hub’s special trade status in response to the quashing of 2019’s large, and at times violent, pro-democracy protests.

China’s foreign ministry representative in Hong Kong “strongly condemned” Washington’s latest move as smearing the new security law and interfering in China’s internal affairs.

The annual review of Hong Kong’s autonomy was “a farce that nobody was buying… and should be sent to history’s trash heap,” said a spokesperson for the Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In 2020, Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong to quell the protests.

Article 23, which became effective last week, is an additional, homegrown national security law that officials said was needed to plug security loopholes.

Separately on Friday, the US government-funded news service Radio Free Asia said that it had closed its Hong Kong office after the enactment of the new law, citing concerns for the safety of its staff.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A lawmaker holds a copy of the proposed Safeguarding National Security Bill during the second reading of the Basic Law Article 23 legislation at the Legislative Council in Hong Kong, on March 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Hong Kong lawmakers unanimously approved a new national security law on March 19 that grants the government more power to quash dissent, widely seen as the latest step in a sweeping political crackdown that was triggered by pro-democracy protests in 2019.

The legislature passed the Safeguarding National Security Bill during a special session that lasted on March 19. It comes on top of a similar law imposed by Beijing four years ago, which has already largely silenced opposition voices in the financial hub.

Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, which is packed with Beijing loyalists following an electoral overhaul, rushed the law through to approval. Since the bill was unveiled on March 8, a committee held daily meetings for a week, following an appeal by Hong Kong leader John Lee to push the law through “at full speed.” After the vote, Mr. Lee said that the law would take effect Saturday.

Critics worry the new law will further erode civil liberties that Beijing promised to preserve for 50 years when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

It threatens stringent penalties for a wide range of actions authorities call threats to national security, with the most severe — including treason and insurrection — punishable by life imprisonment. Lesser offenses, including the possession of seditious publications, could also lead to several years in jail. Some provisions allow criminal prosecutions for acts committed anywhere in the world.

Legislative Council President Andrew Leung said in the morning he believed all lawmakers were honoured to have taken part in this “historic mission.” Leung, who as Council president usually would not vote, also cast a vote to mark the occasion.

John Burns, an honorary professor of politics and public administration at the University of Hong Kong said the process reflected the city’s “disabled accountability system, weakened by design.”

The lawmakers did examine the bill in detail, he said, and the government adopted some amendments proposed by legislators. But during debate many legislators focused on ways to expand the state’s reach on national security issues and increasing penalties for related crimes.

“For those who care about accountable government, the process is disappointing, but not surprising, given the centrally-imposed changes since 2020,” he said.

Simon Young, a professor at the law faculty at the University of Hong Kong said the legislature did more than “rubber-stamping” the law, noting that officials attended lengthy meetings to clarify the bill. But Young said that in the past the legislature might have sought experts’ input.

“It is regrettable that this was not done on this occasion,” he said.

Hong Kong’s political scene has changed dramatically since the massive 2019 street protests that challenged China’s rule over the semi-autonomous territory, and the imposition of Beijing’s National Security Law.

Many leading activists have been prosecuted, while others sought refuge abroad. Influential pro-democracy media such as Apple Daily and Stand News were shuttered. The crackdown prompted an exodus of disillusioned young professionals and middle-class families to the U.S., Britain, Canada, and Taiwan.

Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, requires the city to enact a home-grown national security law. A previous attempt in 2003 sparked a massive street protest that drew half a million people, and forced the legislation to be shelved. Such protests against the current bill were absent largely due to the chilling effect of the existing security law.

Both Chinese and Hong Kong governments say the Beijing-imposed law restored stability after the 2019 protests.

Officials insist the new security law balances security with safeguarding rights and freedoms. The city government said it’s needed to prevent a recurrence of the protests, and that it will only affect “an extremely small minority” of disloyal residents.

The measure targets espionage, disclosing state secrets, and “colluding with external forces” to commit illegal acts, among others. Its provisions include tougher penalties for people convicted of endangering national security by certain acts if they’re also found to be working with foreign governments or organizations to do so.

Those who damage public infrastructure with the intent to endanger national security could be jailed for 20 years, or, if they colluded with external forces, for life. In 2019, protesters occupied Hong Kong’s airport and vandalized railway stations.

Businesspeople and journalists have expressed fears that a broad law against disclosure of state secrets and foreign interference will affect their day-to-day work.

Observers are closely watching to see if the authorities will extend enforcement to other professional sectors and its implications on liberties for Hong Kongers.

Around 390,000 of Hong Kong’s 7.5 million people are Catholic. File.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The Catholic Church in Hong Kong said on March 15 that confessions by devotees to priests would remain confidential under the city’s upcoming national security law.

Hong Kong is fast-tracking a homegrown national security law, following the one Beijing imposed in 2020 after quashing huge and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests.

The government bill — expected to be put to a legislature vote within days — proposes a maximum jail term of 14 years for any person who knows that someone will commit treason but fails to report it to the police.

The Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong said in a statement Friday that it “recognises that citizens have an obligation to ensure national security”.

But the security law “will not alter the confidential nature of Confession”, the diocese added.

The diocese had “expressed its views” on the legislation, but told AFP that it did not intend to make those views public.

UK-based activist group Hong Kong Watch earlier said the offence “directly threatens religious freedom” as it would force priests to reveal what was said in the confessional booth against their conscience.

The former British colony is a common law jurisdiction and has a legal system distinct from mainland China.

Hong Kong authorities defended the proposed criminal offence — which used to be called “misprision of treason” — saying that it had long existed in the city and other common law countries.

Responding to a lawmaker’s question last week, Secretary for Justice Paul Lam said it would be “very difficult to create exceptions” for people like clergy and social workers regarding the offence.

The government has said the measure “has nothing to do with freedom of religion”.

Hong Kong officials conducted a month-long public consultation on the security law and the subsequent legislative vetting took less than a week.

Around 390,000 of Hong Kong’s 7.5 million people are Catholic, according to the diocese, and notable devotees include two former city leaders.

A cleaner discovered two dead baby boys in glass bottles in the living room of an abandoned rented Hong Kong flat on Saturday, as per a report in Fox News. A man and a woman, who are believed to be the parents of the two boys, have been detained. 

At a briefing, officials stated that they are continuing to look into the two boys’ deaths. Both seemed to be less than a year old. “The bodies were soaked in liquid and kept in bottles that were placed in the corner of the living room,” the report added. The bodies were found after the landlord sent a cleaner to the house since the flat had been vacated.

To ascertain the exact age of the babies and to understand whether they were dead at birth, Chief Inspector Au Yeung Tak of the New Territories North division informed reporters that an autopsy would be conducted. He added that the bottles were 30 centimetres tall and the bodies had no obvious signs of injury.

Two people, a 22-year-old woman and a 24-year-old man, were taken into custody on suspicion of unlawful body disposal. According to Mr. Au Yeung, they are thought to be a couple. The man is reported to be a warehouse worker and the woman works in public relations.

In a similar incident, a one-year-old girl was found hidden a in dresser drawer at a home in Oklahoma, USA. Authorities believe Roan Waters, her mother’s boyfriend, killed her and hid her body in a drawer in an abandoned house close to Morgantown. Her death was classified as a “homicide of unspecified means.”

Hong Kong on Friday introduced the draft Bill of a new national security law that includes life sentences for major offences such as treason and insurrection.

The home-grown legislation is set to become the city’s second national security law, following the one Beijing imposed in 2020 after quashing huge and sometimes violent democracy protests.

The “Safeguarding National Security Bill” was formally introduced at the city’s Opposition-free legislature on Friday morning for vetting.

Maximum penalty

The Bill lists five new categories of offences — treason, insurrection, espionage and theft of state secrets, sabotaging national security and external interference.

The Bill also reworks Hong Kong’s colonial-era crime of “sedition” to cover inciting hatred against China’s Communist leadership while upping the maximum penalty from two years to 10 years.

Tam Tak-chi, one of the 47 pro-democracy Hong Kong activists. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Criticizing laws or chanting anti-government slogans can be enough to jail someone for sedition in Hong Kong, an appeal court ruled Thursday in a landmark case brought under a colonial-era law increasingly used to crush dissent.

Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal upheld a 40-month sentence for pro-democracy activist Tam Tak-chi, the first person tried under the city’s sedition law since Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Mr. Tam’s lawyers had argued his conviction should be overturned because the prosecution did not show he meant to incite violence.

The prosecution is widely seen as part of Beijing’s clampdown on dissent in the former British colony, following widespread anti-government protests in 2019.

Mr. Tam was convicted on 11 charges in 2022, including seven counts of “uttering seditious words.” A judge at the lower court took issue with him chanting the popular protest slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times” — words the government says imply separatism — and criticizing the Beijing-imposed National Security Law during a primary campaign.

The judge said his words broke the law because they incited discontent against Hong Kong and disobedience to the law.

Mr. Tam and his lawyers had drawn hope from a ruling made by a top Commonwealth court in a 2023 case about a similar law. In that case, the London-based Privy Council said that the sedition law in Trinidad and Tobago could not be used to convict people unless they intended to incite violence or disorder. The Privy Council is the court of final appeal for a number of Commonwealth countries.

But the Hong Kong court rejected the argument, finding that the Privy Council ruling only applied to the law in Trinidad and Tobago.

Judge Jeremy Poon said sedition in Hong Kong is a statutory offense, not a common law offense. He added that law’s legislative history made it clear that an intention to incite violence is not a necessary element of most sedition offenses.

“Nothing suggests that any individual, including the applicant, a politician and activist highly critical of the government and a stern opponent of government policy, would be subject to an unacceptably harsh burden because of the restriction on seditious acts or speeches imposed by the offense,” the ruling said.

To effectively respond to seditious acts endangering national security, seditious intent has to be “broadly framed to encompass a myriad of situations” that may arise at different times, they said.

Their ruling is expected to guide other sedition cases in the city, including a looming verdict for two former editors at the now-shuttered pro-democracy news outlet Stand News. The media company shut down in 2021 after senior managers were arrested for sedition and police conducted a high-profile raid on its office.

Hong Kong has seen its freedoms decline in recent years as Beijing has tightened control over the city. The sweeping National Security Law, together with the sedition law, has been used to arrest pro-democracy activists and dissidents.

The Hong Kong government has hailed Beijing’s National Security Law for bringing back stability to the city. The city’s administration is planning its own version of the law, targeting offenses like theft of state secrets and espionage, and to sharpen other existing laws.

A draft bill will be submitted to the legislature for debate on Friday, and Hong Kong leader John Lee said in a statement he urged lawmakers to approve the bill “at full speed.”

In proposals unveiled in January, authorities said they were planning to increase penalties for “seditious intention.” Currently, first-time offenders face up to two years’ imprisonment.

In this image from a video taken on October 25, 2023, and released by Hong Kong Legislative Council, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee delivers a policy address at the Legislative Council meeting room in Hong Kong.
| Photo Credit: AP

Hong Kong leader John Lee said on October 25 the semi-autonomous city would create its own national security law in 2024, four years after Beijing imposed sweeping legislation aimed at silencing dissent.

In a three-hour-plus policy address, the Beijing-anointed leader unveiled measures aimed at revitalising Hong Kong’s COVID-ravaged economy and flagging population growth, while asserting the need to protect the Chinese city from “external forces”.

“Some countries are undermining China and the implementation of ‘one country, two systems’ in Hong Kong for their own benefits,” he said, referring to the governance model agreed by Britain and China under which the city would keep some autonomy and freedoms following the 1997 handover.

“External forces continue to meddle in Hong Kong affairs,” he said.

“We must guard against those seeking to provoke conflict… and remain alert to acts of ‘soft resistance’ in different forms,” Mr. Lee said, using a phrase that China and Hong Kong officials have started deploying in speeches to denote anti-government actions.

Massive pro-democracy protests rocked the city in 2019, bringing hundreds of thousands of people to the streets to call for greater freedoms and more autonomy from mainland China.

In response, Beijing imposed a national security law with sentences ranging up to life in prison. As of the end of September, 280 people have been arrested and 30 convicted under the security law.

Security chief-turned-leader Lee — who is under U.S. sanctions for his role in stamping out the protests — said Hong Kong would “continue to safeguard national security”.

“The government is pressing ahead to draw up effective legislative options and will complete the legislative exercise in 2024 to fulfil our constitutional duty,” Mr. Lee said.

Under the Basic Law — the city’s mini-constitution — Hong Kong is required to implement its own law combating seven security-related crimes, including treason and espionage.

The task, often referred to as “a constitutional responsibility” by the city’s government, has yet to be fulfilled more than 25 years after Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule.

The last legislative attempt in 2003 was shelved after half a million people took to the streets in protest.

Mr. Lee told reporters his administration would avoid a repeat of 2003 by “(ensuring) that people will understand what the eventual legislation will do to protect them”.

Thomas Kellogg, executive director of the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University, said the new legislative push was a “deeply disturbing development”.

A new homegrown security law “would give the Hong Kong government the chance… to threaten an even broader array of individuals with legal penalties merely for exercising their basic rights,” Kellogg said.

Mr. Lee also said Hong Kong would “roll out patriotic education to enhance national identity”.

His announcement came a day after Beijing passed a law to strengthen “patriotic education” for children and families as “some people are at a loss about what is patriotism”, said China’s state-run Xinhua news agency.

Hong Kong — which in April finally dropped harsh anti-Covid restrictions that left the finance hub isolated — is “set to… resume growth” this year, Lee said, adding that the first half of 2023 has seen the economy grow 2.2 percent.

He unveiled measures to boost the city’s ailing property market amid falling real estate prices, slashing stamp duty by half to 7.5 percent for non-local buyers and Hongkongers buying additional properties.

Hong Kong’s “long-standing problem” of subdivided units — flats divided into small spaces in often dilapidated buildings — would also be tackled via a taskforce.

The issue of affordable housing remains one of the city’s major policy roadblocks and something successive administrations have failed to tackle.

Lee also sounded the alarm on the “persistently low birth rate” in Hong Kong — which last year recorded its lowest number of births since records began in 1961 — set against a population that has among the longest life expectancies in the world.

A “one-off cash bonus of $20,000 (US$2,600) for each baby born today or after” will be offered to Hong Kongers or parents who are permanent residents — a measure that will last for three years.

Researcher Tan Poh Lin said Singapore’s experience with using cash gifts to boost the fertility rate “does not provide high confidence” that many families would be convinced.

“Given the size of the cash bonus, few couples are likely to respond by increasing fertility intentions… But it is a supportive gesture that can alleviate some of the upfront costs,” said Tan, an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore.