3 Feb 2022 | China, Hong Kong, News and features
Athlete protest has been almost as common a feature of the Olympic Games as elite sporting achievement since its modern inception at the turn of the 20th century.
At the 1906 Games, Irish triple jumper Peter O’Connor protested his registration as a British athlete – Ireland did not have a national Olympic committee at the time – by scaling the flagpole during the award ceremony and waving an Irish flag.
The official recognition of the Games as a platform for protest happened in 1955 when then president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Avery Brundage wrote guidelines into the Olympic bylaws. These stated that Olympic host cities had to ensure “no political demonstrations will be held in the stadium or other sport grounds, or in the Olympic Village, during the Games, and that it is not the intention to use the Games for any other purpose than for the advancement of the Olympic Movement”.
This did not stop perhaps the best known of all Olympic protests – the Black Power demonstrations at the 1968 Mexico Olympics when American 200-metre athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their gloved hands in salute during the US national anthem.
Further changes to athletes’ rights to express themselves were codified in a 1975 update to the Olympic Charter in rule 55, which simply said, “Every kind of demonstration or propaganda, whether political, religious or racial, in the Olympic areas is forbidden”.
The IOC has since moved away from this total ban and now declares itself to be “fully supportive of freedom of expression”.
And yet the most recent version of the rule on athlete expression, now known as Rule 50, state that “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas”. It does though allow for expressing views outside Olympic sites and venues or before and after the Games. Athletes are also permitted to express their views in press conferences, during interviews and through their own social media channels.
In 2020 IOC member Dick Pound wrote: “Everyone has the right to political opinion and the freedom to express such opinions. The IOC fully agrees with that principle and has made it absolutely clear that athletes remain free to express their opinions in press conferences, in media interviews and on social media. But, in a free society, rights may come with certain limitations. Rule 50 restricts the occasions and places for the exercise of such rights. It does not impinge on the rights themselves.”
Athletes recognised just how much of a platform the games give them to express themselves, particularly with the global, 24-hour coverage afforded to it in modern times. As a result, they’ve always pushed back against bans. For example, at the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics, many athletes and teams took the knee in support of the Black Lives Matter movement within Olympic venues.
So what can we expect from Beijing?
When China last hosted the Olympics in Beijing in 2008, it was a dramatically different country. One continuity was the human rights situation and there were protests organised by activists about human rights abuses in Tibet during those Games. Athletes however kept quiet.
A huge amount has changed in the 14 years since the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Athletes may feel very tempted to speak out. The wider world has been made aware of the Uyghur genocide, involving sterilisation, forced education in detention centres, the disappearance of activists and threats around the world against those who do speak out on the atrocities.
China has also cracked down in Hong Kong, effectively ending the one country, two systems policy. It has introduced the national security law, closed down independent media outlets and jailed political opponents.
Meanwhile, its other abuses – such as those in Tibet – have not gone away. Nor has concern over Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, who disappeared late last year after she accused a top official of sexual misconduct.
At the Australian Open in January, athletes did use their platform to speak out about Peng Shuai. It would stand to reason the same would happen in Beijing. And yet China is not Australia.
While the rules governing freedom of expression at the Games have been loosened in the wake of athlete protests, Chinese officials have done little to ease concerns over athletes expressing themselves in Beijing. In mid-January, the deputy director of the Beijing organising committee Yang Shu said that “Any expression that is in line with the Olympic spirit I’m sure will be protected.” She then added, “Any behaviour or speech that is against the Olympic spirit, especially against the Chinese laws and regulations, are also subject to certain punishment.”
Basically, speak out and risk prison. It’s a high price to pay.
Then there’s the question of technology. Unlike 2008 when social media was in its infancy, China will be very worried about the potential for protest to reach a much wider audience than before. Anyone making comments on social media from inside the country will be required to communicate with the world through Chinese telecoms companies.
In December, VOA News reported that China has committed to switch off its Great Firewall for athletes and accredited media in the Olympic Village, competition and noncompetition venues, and contracted media hotels.
Just because the Firewall is being relaxed does not mean what athletes say over social media is not being monitored.
One particular concern for athletes at the Games is the requirement to download an app called MY2022 before arriving in China. The app is ostensibly there to maintain a closed loop system relating to Covid measures. However, researchers at Canada’s Citizen Lab says the app is not secure, leading a number of national Olympic committees, including the USA, Canada, the Netherlands and the UK, to advise their athletes to leave their personal devices at home.
In a statement shared with athletes, Canada’s national committee wrote, “We’ve reminded all Team Canada members that the Olympic Games present a unique opportunity for cybercrime and recommended that they be extra diligent at Games, including considering leaving personal devices at home, limiting personal information stored on devices brought to the Games, and to practice good cyber-hygiene at all times.”
The app also has a number of other features beyond health, such as AI-powered translation and weather, and real-time messaging and audio. Citizen Lab says it also includes features that allow users to report “politically sensitive” content while the Android version includes a censorship keyword list.
The organisation said, “We discovered a file named illegalwords.txt which contains a list of 2,442 keywords generally considered politically sensitive in China. However, despite its inclusion in the app, we were unable to find any functionality where these keywords were used to perform censorship. It is unclear whether this keyword list is entirely inactive, and, if so, whether the list is inactive intentionally.”
The list includes terms such as Xi Jinping, Tiananmen riot, Dalai Lama, Xinjiang and forced demolition. Citizen Lab says that many of the terms are in Uyghur or Tibetan scripts, something that is “not common” in other censored apps such as WeChat and YY.
It is highly likely that one or more principled athletes will use the Beijing Games to make a stand over Xinjiang, Tibet or Hong Kong. The question is whether, with the world watching, China will dare to take them to task.
CCP censorship extends well beyond the Olympic Games, including the targeting of Chinese minorities overseas. Index has investigated the extent to which the Chinese government is using its technological and economic leverage, combined with cultural and diplomatic networks, to intimidate, silence, and discredit Uyghurs in Europe. The report – China’s Long Arm: How Uyghurs are being Silenced in Europe – will be published on 10 February 2022.
Get a free ticket to the launch event here, titled Banned By Beijing: How can Europe stand up for Uyghurs? After the event, check out our website’s Banned By Beijing page to read the report.”
7 Jan 2022 | News and features, Opinion
Happy New Year!
At the start of every year, I have a renewed sense of hope – that maybe, just maybe this year will be different. That the news won’t be filled with egregious breaches of our human rights. That our leaders will embrace their responsibilities to their citizens and that the values outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be the minimum standards adopted around the world, rather than an aspiration.
This naïve wish typically lasts until I turn the news on.
We are hardly one week into 2022 and already dozens of democratic protesters in Kazakhstan have been brutally murdered, thousands hurt and 3,000 people have been arrested for initially campaigning against the cost of fuel. Russian military forces have been deployed to put down the riots and an internet blackout implemented; Nigerian journalists have received suspended jail sentences for publishing reports of organised crime in Niger; In Sudan military efforts to stop democracy protesters have led to one fatality, numerous injuries and restrictions to the internet and communications systems.
Then there is Hong Kong. There a pro-democracy campaigner has been sentenced to 15 months in jail for trying to organise a vigil to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre and the pro-democracy website Citizen News has closed following the raid on StandNews at the end of last year. They fear a similar fate, and their closure represents another sign of the end of media freedom and plurality in Hong Kong.
Finally, images of the Capitol riots from a year ago are dominating the news, reminding us of when protest became criminal and deadly at one of the iconic centres of liberal democracy.
These stories are those of just the last week, the stories that have managed to break through our ongoing Covid horror.
The situation in totalitarian regimes from Afghanistan to Nicaragua, from Belarus to Kashmir and too many others remains grim. There are simply too many regimes that seek to exploit and suppress their populations.
Our role at Index is to make sure that the voices of the persecuted are heard. That every effort to silence them is countered and that every day they know that they are not alone, that there is support and solidarity with their plight.
Because we must never forget that behind each of the headlines is a person, a family, a story of a life lived and in too many cases a life threatened or taken.
The year 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of Index on Censorship magazine – 50 years of telling the stories of those who cannot tell their own stories. Fifty years of documenting attacks on free speech and free expression in every corner of the globe. In the coming months Index will be celebrating our birthday, but also commemorating those that we have lost in the fight for free speech during our history. We will telling some extraordinary stories – and we will need you to help us amplify them.
Happy New Year and I hope you and yours have a safe and happy 2022.
6 Jan 2022 | China, Hong Kong, News and features, United Kingdom, Volume 50.04 Winter 2021, Volume 50.04 Winter 2021 Extras
Nathan Law has been imprisoned, disqualified from political office and forced to seek political asylum in the UK – all for fighting for democratic rights in Hong Kong, his home city. But, in spite of it all, he remains optimistic.
“As an activist I’m not entitled to lose hope,” he tells Index on Censorship. “I still believe that maybe in a decade’s time I can set foot in Hong Kong, when it’s democratic and free.”
Law, 28, fled to London in the summer of 2020 after the passing of the National Security Law, a draconian piece of legislation that criminalises even a whisper of criticism against Beijing’s rule.
Given the chance, what would he tell Communist Party leaders in Beijing?
“I would say, ‘There is no totalitarian regime that can remain forever. All of them will collapse’, and I’d say, ‘That is your fate if you continue to do what you are doing’.”
Law’s face and name are synonymous with the struggles in Hong Kong. Alongside Joshua Wong, Alex Chow and Agnes Chow, he has helped drive the recent protest movement.
The son of a construction worker and a cleaner, he first became interested in democratic values at secondary school when the late writer and human rights defender Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. Liu was serving his fourth prison sentence in China and was unable to accept the prize in person. An image of an empty chair soon went viral, a stark reminder of how bad human rights were in China.
“I grew up in a family that did not talk about politics, did not talk about social affairs,” Law says. Although he studied in a pro-Beijing school, he was “not heavily brainwashed to believe in the Communist Party”. He adds: “I was apolitical. I was not involved.” But when Liu won the prize, the principal of his school publicly denounced the writer in morning assembly.
“It triggered my curiosity because I thought people getting the Nobel Prize are the ones who are good in their field. So how come such a person – a Chinese [person] – would be criticised in that fashion? It really triggered my curiosity and got me to look into the work that he had been doing. He opened up a gate for me to understand all these concepts.”
That gate first led Law to the Tiananmen Square vigil, held in Hong Kong every year since 1989, and then to him leading the 2014 Umbrella Movement (which later landed him in prison on charges of “unlawful assembly”).
After this, Law became the youngest legislator in Hong Kong’s history, a position from which he was quickly disqualified when he modified his oath of allegiance to China during the swearing-in ceremony in October 2016.
In the same year, he founded Demosistō, a pro-democracy political party, with Agnes Chow and Wong.
But time was up when the National Security Law was passed. Demosistō was disbanded, Law was forced out of Hong Kong and Chow and Wong were jailed, alongside scores of others connected to the democracy movement.
Today, dissent is in a straitjacket in Hong Kong. And yet not all have given up fighting. In Law’s recently published book – Freedom: How We Lose It And How We Fight Back – he writes: “Even during this most bitter of times the spirit of ordinary Hong Kong people continues to shine, even if it must do so in the shadows.”
Law lists the people who refuse to have their prison sentences lessened by agreeing to the charges against them and instead “defend themselves in order to narrate their story at the risk of heavy sentencing”. He lists those who attend court hearings to show support to the defendants, those who write letters to the imprisoned and those who advocate for any policy that might remotely challenge the government.
“The hope lies in these people. Even though we are in the darkest time and change is seemingly impossible, people are still doing things because they feel that it is the right thing to do,” he says.
Law might have an admirable sense of hope, but his is not an easy life. He had to publicly sever ties with his family when he moved to the UK and has been unable to talk to Agnes Chow and Wong, too. He misses the people and he misses the place.
“I always dream about Hong Kong,” he says. “You’re familiar with everything. You don’t have to think. Like when you step into the MTR [the subway]. It’s in your muscles, in your memory. You understand everything. You understand all the slang. The background noise with people’s hectic walk, the hectic talk of Cantonese and bus horns, those noises from the stores and from restaurants. It’s just unique.”
Law has been granted asylum in the UK – a move that angered Beijing, which declared him a criminal suspect. Even though he is thousands of miles from Hong Kong, he still has to look over his shoulder. He takes extra precautions: he never mentions where he lives and he takes detours when he leaves and returns home – measures that have come to define the life of China’s dissidents. He simply doesn’t feel safe “because of how extensive China’s reach can be”.
“We’ve got cases like Navalny; the Russian dissident forced to land in Belarus; we’ve also got a lot of cases of Uyghur activists around the world being arrested or extradited back to China. There are a lot of things that can happen to dissidents. It is not a secret that I am almost at the top of the list of national enemies that China portrays, so things like this could happen,” he says.
“On the other hand, I don’t want any of these fears to hinder my activities and my activism. So I will try to be vigilant to protect myself, but I will also try 100% to promulgate the agenda of the Hong Kong democratic movement.”
One of the ways that he wants to do this is through publishing his book. A blend of personal experience and broader context, Law wants it to appeal to as many people as possible and for these people to “act after reading it”.
“I’m an author, of course, but at the end of the day my essential identity is an activist. By definition, an activist is someone who tries to empower people to act in order to precipitate social changes. I intend to appeal to people to be more aware of their own democratic states,” he says.
As for what we can do to help Hong Kong, Law puts it simply: “Get involved. Pay more attention to Hong Kong and to China. Start to look into campaigns that could help, like boycotting the Olympics, supporting political prisoners or even reading news – just supporting the news agencies who produce these fantastic stories for Hong Kong and for China.
“After that, if you really want to be a campaigner that supports Hong Kong then get organised. Find your local grassroots organisation and be a volunteer and try to explain that to your friends and your neighbours.”
It might be the darkest chapter in Hong Kong’s story, but – to channel Law’s optimism – let’s hope it’s not the last.
How I exposed Beijing’s big lie
Young activist Nathan Law’s election to the Legislative Council in 2016 shattered the myth that the people of Hong Kong did not desire freedom and democracy, he says in an extract from his new book
In August 2016, a month before the election, our team were starting to worry. The polls suggested I had little support in the constituency I was running in. Hong Kong Island is a wealthy and generally conservative district, known for electing prominent members of Hong Kong’s professional and elite class – lawyers, public intellectuals and former government officials. To make things more difficult, my constituency happened to have the highest number of elderly residents. It was also an important ‘super seat’ that would return six places in the legislature by proportional representation, so fifteen parties had fielded candidates.
While we were hopeful, our expectations were low. I may have been a public figure, but I was known only as a student activist. Going straight from student activism to the first tier of Hong Kong politics was not easy. I had to adjust my mindset. I was no longer representing students like me, but having to appeal to and present myself as someone who could represent a much broader range of people. I needed to demonstrate that I had the ability to understand the complexity of realpolitik, and accommodate the diverse needs and views of constituents. I also had to convince people that I was able to represent them in the city’s highest chamber.
In the last two weeks of the election, I worked as hard as I could to outline my beliefs and analyse heated debates about policy. I wanted to prove that age, education and experience are not the deciding factors in what constitutes a proper lawmaker: determination, vision and eloquence are what matter most.
The 2016 election saw an unprecedented turnout: 2.2 million voters, 58 per cent of the registered electorate, cast their vote. Despite the constant hectoring of Beijing’s loyalists, the silent majority had spoken, and it was in favour of pro-democracy candidates. A new force had emerged in local politics, with new, progressive localist candidates winning six seats. And I won my seat, by a far greater margin than polls had suggested, to become Hong Kong’s youngest ever lawmaker.
I was so proud of what we had achieved. We had exercised our right to stand for election, and in voting for us the people of Hong Kong had exercised their right to elect representatives who shared their concerns. The legislature may have been designed to ensure a pro-establishment majority, making it more of a debating chamber than a true law-making body. But to be one of thirty-five directly elected legislators still mattered.
My election represented an expression of the limited political rights Hong Kong people enjoyed – an expression of our freedom. I had a democratic mandate and no one in government could claim otherwise. Even if all I could do was be one voice in the chamber, this voice would be heard throughout the city; and for so many people of my generation, and for all those who had voted for me, that mattered.
At twenty-three years of age, I was Hong Kong’s youngest legislator. Often, babies of the House, as the youngest parliamentarians are called in the UK, go on to have long careers in politics. Mine in Hong Kong would be one of the shortest.
Legislative Council members are elected to serve a four-year term. As my team moved into our new offices in the Legislative Council Complex, there was no reason to suppose we would not be there for at least that long. We did our best to make ourselves feel comfortable in room 901. As an activist I had met and worked with many legislators, but to be sitting in the Council building now as one of them felt different. I watched political aides come and go, and my staff hovering busily about, and could not help but wonder if I truly belonged there. Was this the right place for an activist? Could it accommodate us?
Well-known democratic lawmakers stopped by to welcome me. They did their best to make me feel I belonged. Many were politicians and campaigners I looked up to and had worked with during the protests. They had fought hard for a better Hong Kong – for labour rights, civil liberties and for other important freedoms. Still, any pride I might have felt was overridden by the realisation of what I was up against. Though my allies in the democratic camp were capable and respected in the wider community, they were operating within a system designed to ensure they would never have power. And those who did have power would seek to silence and destroy us.
My election had been a terrible loss of face for Beijing and their loyal supporters. It shattered one of their principal lies: that the majority of Hong Kong people are loyal patriots who place the ‘nation’ (meaning the CCP) over local issues and a desire for freedom and democracy. It was a lie that had served the interests of the powerful, from the officials and secret Communist Party members who dominated Hong Kong’s elites to international businesses who had throughout Hong Kong’s history suppressed the will of the people in order to promote so-called stability and a favourable commercial environment. It was a lie that Hong Kong’s last governor, Chris Patten, had bravely challenged by going directly to the people, refusing the assurances of an elite who insisted that Hong Kong people were apolitical. It was a lie that had become increasingly pernicious as Beijing encroached on our freedoms, making democratic representation even more important. And my presence in the Legislative Council, alongside other new and progressive lawmakers, told the world that it was a lie. Beijing would not forgive me for that.
Extracted from Freedom: How We Lose it and How We Fight Back, by Nathan Law, published by Transworld in November 2021
This interview and the extract appeared in the winter issue of Index on Censorship. Click here for more information on this issue
3 Jun 2021 | China, Hong Kong, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116835″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]For 30 years in a row after the 4 June bloodshed in Beijing, Hong Kong people had turned out en masse at Victoria Park, the city’s central park, to commemorate the victims of the killings at and around Tiananmen Square in the summer of 1989.
The regular June scenes saw marked changes last year. The imminent enforcement of a national security law scheduled for 1 July 2020 and a government ban on assembly on grounds of the Covid-19 epidemic cast a long shadow over the annual vigil. Still, thousands of people came out, holding candlelights and vowing “not to forget 4 June”.
Citing social distancing rules again this year, the Police rejected the application for a march planned for 30 May and an assembly at the park on 4 June to mark the 32nd anniversary.
The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movement in China (Alliance), an umbrella body composed of pro-democracy groups which holds the vigil every year, has announced they will not hold any event at the park in the evening of 4 June.
More than 20 democrats, including leaders of the Alliance, who took part in last year’s candlelight vigil last year, were convicted of participating in unlawful assembly. They were given jail sentences of up to 14 months.
The remaining Alliance leaders will no doubt be arrested and face at least the same charge if they turn up at the park on 4 June. Worse, they may be charged with subversion under the national security law.
Alliance leaders advised people to commemorate the victims in a safe and peaceful manner.
Media reports quoted anonymous sources close to the government warning people not to wear black clothes – a regular form of portest – and not to hold up candles at and near Victoria Park. First, they may breach the social distancing rules. Mort importantly, they may be charged with unlawful assembly if they are deemed to have the same purpose in public places.
As this article goes to press, the city is laden with an air mixed with anger and fear, persistence and helplessness.
Following the harsh sentences of democrats convicted of unlawful assembly and the enactment of the national security law, fear has swept the city. Calls for a democratic China and an end of one-party dictatorship that resonated in earlier 4 June vigils could now be deemed as subversive.
Although the majority of people still believe they are on the right side of the history of the 4 June crackdown and must persist in holding up the candle of hope, they feel helpless in stopping the government crackdown on commemorating the anniversary.
Last Wednesday, the operators of the 4 June Museum run by the Alliance closed its doors, hours after officials from the Food and Environmental Hygiene department accused it of operating as a place of public entertainment without the required licences.
The museum reopened briefly on Sunday to mark the 4 June anniversary; it may never reopen again.
Founded at the heyday of the student-led movement in 1989, the Alliance’s days are seemingly numbered. Pro-Beijing political figures and media have put more pressure on the Government to ban the Alliance on grounds that its call for an end of one-party dictatorship in its manifesto is subversive.
Its disbandment is no longer a question of if, but when.
This is not so much because the Alliance has or will pose any real threat, nor embarrassment, to the ruling Chinese Communist Party. It can be argued that the opposite is true. That it was allowed to exist has provided a real-life case study that showed the world how the policy of “one country, two systems” worked.
Except for the much-smaller scale of commemorations in Taiwan, Hong Kong had been the only place in mainland China where people were allowed to commemorate the Tiananmen massacre.
Tolerance of the communist authorities towards 4 June commemoration, and indeed a free Hong Kong, has now run out.
With hindsight, the authorities feel they were wrong to have given too much freedom to Hong Kong people. As a result of that, many, in particular young people, have kept testing Beijing’s tolerance by crossing the political “red lines”, referring to politically sensitive issues such as independence and self-determination as well as challenging the system of government and their governance.
The protracted territory-wide protests sparked by a bill on extradition in 2019, followed by a landslide victory of the democrats in the district council elections in November that year, have shocked Beijing. They responded by imposing the national security law and overhauling the election system to make sure the city is run by Beijing-trusted patriots.
With democracy scuttled and freedom curtailed, the 4 June candlelights, described by Nancy Pelosi, US House Speaker, as “a beautiful sight to behold”, may now become history, testifying the end of “one country, two systems.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”85″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
