Benedict Rogers: Love can’t be arrested or exiled
Three years ago, when I was denied entry to Hong Kong, Ray Chan staged a protest on the floor of the Legislative Council, within hours of my deportation. Holding up a poster-size photograph of him and me taken just a few weeks earlier when we met in London, he demanded an explanation as to why I had been refused entry to the city that had once been my home. Other legislators joined in and raised questions.
So when I learned that Ray, together with Ted Hui and Eddie Chiu had been arrested, I was outraged. I did not hesitate to express my solidarity with them. Of course I would have done so anyway, as I do for any pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong who is on the receiving end of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s injustice, but I felt a special affinity with these three legislators.
The fact that they were charged retrospectively, for disrupting the Legislative Council’s discussion of the national anthem law in May, is appalling – and in keeping with a spiralling trend. They had all previously paid fines of $6,707-$12,898 (52,000-100,000 Hong Kong dollars) each over the incidents. Their arrest is part of a concerted and accelerating campaign by the CCP regime not only to rid the legislature of all democrats – a goal it achieved last week – but to silence, jail and eliminate all opposition.
The CCP might, in the short-term, succeed in ridding Hong Kong’s mainstream public square of democrats. It might succeed in its clear aim of filling Hong Kong’s prisons with democrats. But events elsewhere show that it will never succeed in its goal of eliminating the democracy movement or silencing opposition.
The day before the three legislators were arrested, six thousand miles away in London Hong Kong’s opposition was being honoured and celebrated at what has become one of the most prestigious human rights awards ceremonies in the world – the Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Awards. Nathan Law, once elected as Hong Kong’s youngest ever legislator and now Hong Kong’s highest profile exile, received the Outstanding Opposition Figure of the Year award, presented – appropriately – by the last Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten.
Of course Nathan would be the first to say that so many in the movement are deserving of such an award, and he received it on behalf of Hong Kongers. That’s true – but it is also true that Nathan personally has displayed extraordinary character, courage, conviction and capability and deserved to be honored personally. He is carrying the candle of Hong Kong’s struggle for freedom around the world with a dignity and wisdom that far exceeds his young age. For every legislator disqualified or jailed, don’t forget the young legislator who continues to represent his electors, albeit in exile, giving hope and inspiring the world to fight for Hong Kong.
And there is hope. Every week, almost every day, I wake up in London and switch on my phone to find more bad news from Hong Kong. But every day I give talks, media interviews and have meetings with Parliamentarians and policy-makers around the world, and I find audiences that are engaged, supportive and keen to help – more than ever before.
Just on Wednesday this week, I spoke in three webinars. The first was one Hong Kong Watch organised, to examine the United Kingdom’s British National Overseas (BNO) policy. We were joined by Layla Moran MP, the Liberal Democrats’ foreign affairs spokesperson, who emphasised the truly cross-party support in Parliament for Hong Kong, and by Neil Jamieson, founder of Citizens UK, Britain’s largest and most diverse civil society alliance, and of UK Welcomes Refugees, who highlighted his goal to see every major city in the UK establish a group to welcome Hong Kongers who move to Britain. My colleagues and I are working with Neil and others to build networks throughout the UK to be ready to welcome and help Hong Kongers who come here. The message from all the speakers on the panel was this: Hong Kongers, we don’t want you to leave Hong Kong, but we’re ready to ensure you find a warm welcome in Britain if you do.
I then spoke at the 15th annual Interethnic Interfaith Leadership Conference, an initiative of my friend Dr Yang Jianli, a mainland Chinese dissident who fled into exile after the Tiananmen massacre. In recent years he has been helping to build a ‘United Front’ of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers, Chinese Christians and others, to counter the CCP’s ‘United Front’. I was invited to speak about Hong Kong, and found an audience that was deeply sympathetic.
Later on Wednesday night I spoke in a webinar to students from the London School of Economics. They were unanimous in their support, and many asked how they could get involved. Many asked good questions, all seemed deeply engaged, and that gives me hope, that young people in Britain today understand what is happening to Hong Kong and in China, and know that the free world has a duty to help. One of the most encouraging moments was when a Chinese student with a mainland accent drew comparisons between the situation in China today with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, and compared Xi Jinping with Hitler. Let’s hope we can encourage more mainland Chinese to be as courageous as him.
This week I have also had calls with Parliamentarians from Australia and Germany, who emphasised how far and fast opinion in their legislatures has moved against the CCP. There is still much more to be done, but as I told one audience the combined effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, the destruction of Hong Kong’s freedoms, genocide against the Uyghurs, the realization about Huawei’s complicity with the CCP and the CCP’s own ‘wolf-warrior diplomacy’ has, in a very short space of time, awakened the consciences of many.
That was proven yet again when, just as I was finishing writing this article, the foreign ministers of the ‘Five Eyes’ nations – the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States – issued a powerful statement about the erosion of Hong Kong’s freedoms following the imposition of the national security law and the disqualification of pro-democracy legislators. “China’s action is a clear breach of its international obligations under the legally binding, UN-registered Sino-British Joint Declaration. It breaches both China’s commitment that Hong Kong will enjoy a ‘high degree of autonomy’, and the right to freedom of speech,” the foreign ministers say. “The disqualification rules appear part of a concerted campaign to silence all critical voices following the postponement of September’s Legislative Council elections, the imposition of charges against a number of elected legislators, and actions to undermine the freedom of Hong Kong’s vibrant media. We call on China to stop undermining the rights of the people of Hong Kong to elect their representatives in keeping with the Joint Declaration and Basic Law.”
Hong Kongers, the Five Eyes nations stand with you, and so does the whole free world.
In all of this, let’s remember that this is a fight for values, not between peoples. In other words, it’s a fight against the CCP, not China. As Myanmar’s Cardinal Charles Bo, President of the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences, put it in his message for the International Day of Tolerance at the start of the week, “United we stand, divided we fall … Hatred, xenophobia, intolerance will wound the whole of humanity. Stand together, save humanity. Celebrate dignity in diversity.” Everyone who values freedom, human dignity and human rights and opposes the CCP’s repression domestically and aggression beyond its borders should unite with one common cause.
Cardinal Bo, who has spoken out for Hong Kong several times, recognises the deep pain that exists throughout the world today. His words apply especially to everyone suffering under the CCP, and especially this week as we mourn the first anniversary of the shocking tragedy at Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University. Those horrific scenes a year ago brought many tears. But hear Cardinal Bo’s words: “We shall only win when we treat our brothers and sisters’ tears as our own. Adore them. Tears have no colour, no religion, no race. We are all one in this challenge to our own existence,” he writes. And in our tears, let us love – for it is love that will win in the end. “Fall in love, stay in love, save humanity. Love is the supreme virtue. Love is the identity card of every human being.”
It is such love that I have seen in the words and actions of Hong Kongers I know. It is such love that propels me and my colleagues in what we try to do with and for Hong Kongers. And it is such love that surely will prevail in the end.
There will be more arrests. There will doubtless be many more exiles. But be assured of one thing: the world is waking, the world is watching and, armed with such love, my friends and I won’t rest until we know the world is acting.
Benedict Rogers is co-founder and Chief Executive of Hong Kong Watch. This article was published in Apple Daily on 21 November 2020. (Photo: Apple Daily)