17 Jul 20 | News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”114308″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I think it’s fair to say that issues associated with free speech have been a recurring feature of our news in the last month, from the removal of Colston’s statue in Bristol, to the Hong Kong National Security law, to the very public debate on “cancel culture”. It seems a day doesn’t go by without a reference to free speech or someone pontificating on where the limits should be.
There are lots of things missing in the current conversation about free speech though – at least for me. The most crucial of which is why free speech is a core human right. Why does it matter if our voices are limited? If we can’t write or create art who does that hurt? If we don’t know what’s going on around the world – does it make a difference to our families?
I’m hoping that if you’re reading this then you share my view that being able to use our voices and to listen to each other gives us our humanity.
As a core tenet, our right to free speech has built the society that we live in – at least here in the UK. It has given us the literature which changes our perceptions of the world. Art that provokes emotion, academia which challenges the world as we know it and ensures that our society continues to develop and thrive. And of course, journalism which, on a daily basis, exposes the powerful and seeks to provide the ultimate scrutiny.
July 2020 has been an awful month to be a journalist in Britain. The BBC, The Guardian and Reach (the owner of the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express as well as numerous local and regional papers) have all announced redundancies. Meanwhile, the Archant group (which also own dozens of local papers) is desperately seeking a new buyer. Covid-19 is having a devastating effect on the media on which we rely to make sure that corruption is reported, that repressive regimes are exposed and that provides a platform to speak truth to power. So, if you don’t already, it’s time to subscribe to a newspaper to make sure that journalism as a profession survives the 2020s.
Freedom of journalistic expression is vital for our society and in an era of disinformation and counter-propaganda, reliable and constant sources of information have never been more important. If it wasn’t for investigative journalists then we would not know of the horrendous plight of the Uighurs who, as I write, are are being transported to concentration camps in the Xinjiang province. We wouldn’t know of the women who are being sterilised by order of the state and of the children who are being re-educated.
Journalists at their best shine a light in the darkness and their bravery and determination makes the world listen and forces governments to act. I pray that, even in the middle of this awful pandemic, we listen to those brave voices reported in our daily newspapers and stand with the Uighurs against what can only be described as acts of genocide.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”YOU MIGHT LIKE TO READ” category_id=”581″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
03 Jul 20 | China, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, News and features, Opinion
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”114148″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Following the news this week has been harrowing. Beyond the ongoing awful deaths from Covid-19 and the daily redundancy notices we also now have some governments turning against their citizens. Free speech around the world, or rather the restrictions on it, have dominated nearly every news cycle and behind each report there have been inspiring personal stories of immense bravery in standing up against repression.
While there have been government orchestrated or sanctioned attacks on free speech across the globe, from Turkey to Poland, Brazil to Kashmir, the most stark has been the appalling attack on human rights in Hong Kong. The Chinese government has dealt a fatal blow to the “one country, two systems” pledge. In the hours that followed the government enacting its new National Security Law for Hong Kong, hundreds of people deleted their social media accounts for fear of arrest. Pro-democracy campaigners have shut up shop in the fear of life imprisonment and journalists on the ground are under huge pressure to curtail their reports.
In spite of the very real threat of arrest, however, thousands of people have taken to the streets to demand their human rights to free association, to free speech and to a life lived without fear of tyranny. Their actions, their bravery and their determination should inspire us all and I’d urge you to read the words of our correspondent from Hong Kong, Tammy Lai-Ming Ho. Events in Hong Kong need to generate more than just a hashtag – we need action from our governments. And we all must stand with Hong Kong.
As events developed in Hong Kong other national leaders were also moving against their populations. On Monday, the Ethiopian musician and activist Haacaaluu Hundeessaa was murdered. Hundeessaa’s music provided the living soundtrack to the protest movement that led to the former prime minister’s resignation. In the hours that followed Hundeessaa’s murder 80 people were killed and the government deployed the military in order to restrict protest and limit access to Hundeessaa’s funeral. They have also switched off access to the internet (again) to stop people telling their stories.
It is easy for us to miss the people behind these events. And in a world where oppression is becoming all too common, sustaining our anger to support one cause when the next outrage is reported can be difficult. But we cannot and will not abandon those who have shown such bravery in the face of brute force and institutional power.
Index was created to be “a voice for the persecuted” and with you we will keep being exactly that. Providing a platform for the voiceless and shining a light on repressive regimes wherever they may be.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”Essential reading” full_width_heading=”true” category_id=”581″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
01 Jul 20 | China, News and features, Student Reading Lists
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Illustration from cartoonist tOad published today in response to the new law. twitter.com/t0adscroak, www.unsitesurinternet.fr
The National Security Law passed on 30 June in Hong Kong has dealt a massive blow to the city’s status as an autonomous region into which the Chinese government’s suppression of freedom of expression doesn’t encroach. The new law will criminalise “any act of secession, subversion of the central government, terrorism or collusion with foreign or external forces”.
Language like this, as those on the mainland may have experienced, could be manipulated to apply to any behaviour the Chinese government doesn’t like, leaving journalists, activists, protesters and campaigners at risk. Activists in Hong Kong have already begun to shut down their operations out of fear of reprisal in the wake of the law.
Since 1997, when Hong Kong was handed back to China having previously been a British colony, Hongkongers have enjoyed freedom of expression, including a flourishing free press, under the “one country, two systems” constitutional principle. As this principle begins to crumble, we look back at pieces published in Index magazine in 1997 which explored the implications of the handover and the future relationship between mainland China and Hong Kong.
In this edited version of the speech given by Professor Helen Fung-Har Siu in Hong Kong in 1996, she explored the national identity of Hong Kongers and how it intersected with the oppressive nature of the Chinese authorities. In the years preceding the 1997 handover, the people of Hong Kong enjoyed freedom of expression; Siu noted that one in six people there marched in protest at the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Dissecting the socioeconomic developments in Hong Kong through the 1970s and 80s, Siu questioned how the region and its people, who are accustomed to independence from China, would adapt to its new relationship with the People’s Republic.
Published in early 1997 in anticipation of the handover, Geremie R Barmé, author of Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader, wrote on the flow of popular culture from Hong Kong and Taiwan to mainland China through the 1980s. He explored how the lure of Beijing’s culture waned through the 70s, leading people to soak up the film and music coming from the south, despite attempts by the authorities to censor it. Hong Kong, independent from the Chinese authorities, acted as a conduit between the people in mainland China and Taiwan, and indeed the rest of the world. Barmé predicted that, as Hong Kong returned to China, the subsection of society supporting communist ideals would be brought to the fore by the mainland.
He wrote: “The patriotic significance of Hong Kong’s return to the mainland is lost on no-one. It is part of the final process of what the Communist authorities, and many people in China, see as the reunification of a divided nation.”
Ma Jian, an artist who left Beijing for Hong Kong in 1990, shared his feelings of liberation as he crossed the border and reflects on the suppression of his art on the mainland. Demanding rights and freedom from the Chinese authorities was, he wrote “like being on a battlefield”. Jian wrote that he would remain in Hong Kong after the handover, but projected a lack of optimism about his future freedoms.
“As we watch, incredulously, pre-ordained history advances, or rather, steps backwards to meet us,” he wrote. “No-one asks whether we accept the past, whether we can go and live the time we have already lived. It is as though, studying at middle school, we are suddenly sent back to kindergarten.”
In July 1998, Edward Lucie-Smith visited Hong Kong to find out how the city was acclimatising to the handover one year on. Finding local people unwilling to discuss at length the direction freedom of speech had taken, Lucie-Smith looked to global economic developments and how they could impact Hong Kong’s political future, and in turn the future of freedom of expression. Hong Kong faced an economic downturn in 1998, along with other so-called ‘tiger-economies’, meaning the Hong Kong Chinese elite, who were middlemen between the democratic forces in Hong Kong and the Chinese authorities, may have chosen to move to other parts of the world, leaving Hong Kong and its people more at risk of being ideologically swallowed up by the mainland.
He wrote: “The general feeling was that the British were handing over an economic jewel – a financial mechanism so successful and so finely tuned that the mainland Chinese government would be foolish to interfere with its functioning. But would it be able to resist tinkering, on ideological grounds, with the ‘special economic zone’ within China that Hong Kong was now to become?”
Published in January 1997, Jonathan Mirsky, then East Asia editor of The Times, wrote on how freedom of expression began to crumble in Hong Kong in anticipation of the handover. He described how news channels reported on China in a “vapid or grovelling” manner, to avoid attempts at censorship by Chinese representatives in Hong Kong.
Outspoken democratic politicians told Mirsky how their colleagues no longer wanted to be associated with them. Organisations were expected to plan celebrations for the handover, and comply. Mirsky predicted a dismal future for Hong Kong where loyalty to the Party would be an overriding expectation.
Charles Goddard, at the time of writing a member of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, discussed Hong Kong’s position as eyes on China for the rest of the world, where issues such as human rights abuses in mainland China could be discussed and dissidents from the Chinese authorities could find a relatively safe haven. Goddard, however, highlighted the dangers to journalists in Hong Kong reporting negatively about China, predicting that the status of the city as a place where freedom of expression could flourish would only diminish.
Liu Dawen, at the time of writing the editor of Front Line magazine, took an optimistic view of Hong Kong’s future, believing that the spirit of democracy would not wane.
“In the longer term, the Party cannot stem the ‘raging tide’ of democracy indefinitely either in Hong Kong or in the People’s Republic. When things reach a certain pitch, the pendulum must swing back in the opposite direction,” he wrote.
Charting the arrests and imprisonments of Chinese journalists, Asia-Pacific researcher for Reporters San Frontieres Barbara Vital-Durand painted a picture of China as a country which cracked down harshly on outspoken dissidents from the party line. She foreshadowed a world in which, post-handover, Chinese authorities would extend the jaws of censorship to crush Hong Kong journalists, and access to the internet on the mainland would be tightly controlled.
“Journalists’ organisations and free speech groups have been unsuccessful in getting the British authorities – or subsequently China’s Preparatory Working Committee (PWC) – to abolish several legislative measures which, if left in place, will provide the Chinese authorities with some powerful weapons to use against the media,” she wrote.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”3″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1593615252756-723f64f2-cdee-10″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
30 Jun 20 | News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”113563″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]The fear was palpable on social media. Days before Hong Kong’s National Security Law was passed people started to delete their Twitter accounts.
“It is already corroding our freedom and rights,” wrote Alex Lam, a reporter for Apple Daily, who remained on the platform.
The fear was felt by journalists. “I’m keeping a low profile” people told Index as they refused to be interviewed “on the record”. Soon the word “anonymous” appeared with great frequency on articles from the city.
And the fear was felt in the streets, as far fewer took to them to protest, in stark contrast to last year when threat of a similar bill saw millions on them.
The National Security Law, which Beijing announced in May and passed today, has already done exactly what it intended – it has paralysed pro-independence and pro-democracy advocates in the city.
The opacity of the law is part of its success. It criminalises secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, but none of these have yet been clearly defined. Anthony Dapiran, a lawyer in Hong Kong and author of City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong, told Index that “no Hong Kong lawyer will be in a position to advise on the law and its impact with any certainty, which is clearly a concern for Hong Kong’s rule of law.”
Mainland China, of course, provides some clues.
“On the mainland, national security laws are routinely used to arbitrarily detain, prosecute and jail a wide range of critical voices, including journalists. Right now we have no guarantees beyond some vague assurances from an authoritarian one party state with a dismal track record of respecting press freedom,” a journalist told Index. The journalist works for a major global media organisation. They requested anonymity for fear of retaliation on themselves or their company.
Echoing their views, writer and Hong Kong resident Tammy Lai-Ming Ho wrote in a letter published yesterday on Index’s site that “we only have the worst case scenarios to look forward to”.
“A similar law has been used in mainland China to attack dissidents, including democracy advocates such as the late Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo and human rights lawyers such as Wang Quanzhang, not to mention academics and labour activists who are not household names,” she said.
“For decades Hong Kong has been a major media hub for Asia. But international media will have to think long and hard about whether Hong Kong can remain a safe and viable place to host regional headquarters or major newsrooms. If foreign and local journalists start having to self-censor, watch what they write or who they interview, what talks they host or attend or which organisation they work for, then many organisations may well relocate to freer environments with stronger legal protections,” added the anonymous journalist.
David Schlesinger, former chairman of Thomson Reuters China, who lived in Hong Kong on and off between 1982 and 2017, concurs. He told Index:
“It will certainly affect coverage of Hong Kong itself. It’s been a completely free reporting environment, whereas now people will have to look over their shoulders. They will have to treat it like they would if they were reporting in Shanghai or Beijing.”
Schlesinger says local reporters will be most affected. Reporters from Ming Pao and Apple Daily, for example. But he also says it will affect where international news organisations base their headquarters. Schlesinger cites the case of Bloomberg. In 2012, while researching an explosive story on the wealth of incoming president Xi Jinping’s extended family, key members of Bloomberg’s normally China-based staff left Beijing and researched out of Hong Kong itself, and then, once the story blew up, moved to the territory as a safe refuge, something that now would be unimaginable.
One thing is clear: it deals a devastating blow to Hong Kong’s autonomy as promised under the “one country, two systems” framework, the terms of the former British colony’s handover to Chinese control in 1997 which were meant to last until 2047. Over the last week a meme has spread online by the city’s youth. It reads: “I expected to be older when 2047 came”. Beneath the humour lies sadness and desperation.
Chinese cartoonist Badiucao told Index: “The passage of the National Security Law in Hong Kong marks the end of a free city and may just as well open the curtain of the new Cold War between China and the world.”
For those who have been watching Hong Kong closely over the years the law has not come out of nowhere. In a special for Index on Censorship magazine in January 1997, just ahead of the handover on 1st July 1997, Index noted:
“Beijing’s strident policies on Hong Kong seems to be confirming some darker fears about the continued protection of freedom of expression after 1997. Over the past year the Chinese authorities have shown themselves to be concerned not with protecting the right to freedom of expression, about which they have grave misgivings, but with eroding it.”
Index has raised concerns periodically since. A major turning point was 2014 when Beijing issued a decision regarding proposed reforms to the Hong Kong electoral system that challenged Hong Kong’s political autonomy. The reforms sparked the Umbrella Movement. Back then, Index reported on how self-censorship had become “insidious” in the city.
“It’s a creeping, insidious type of thing. If you want to keep your job, you tow the line. I work with guys who are pro press freedom, but they are still censoring constantly,” said a reporter from a prominent local newspaper.
It wasn’t just self-censorship. The same article spoke of violent attacks on journalists who were critical of the Hong Kong and Chinese governments, including Kevin Lau, former chief editor of Ming Pao, who was stabbed in his back and legs as he got out of a car.
We reported on the forced disappearance of Hong Kong booksellers in 2015 and how the city had gone from a place that would publish daring, critical books on China to somewhere where editors said no.
Then in 2018 we investigated a novel intimidation tactic that was moving beyond Hong Kong. Specifically, threatening letters were landing on the doorstep of people in the UK who were critical of the human rights record in Hong Kong. And not just them, their neighbours were receiving letters too. Hong Kong native Evan Fowler, himself a recipient of threatening letters, told Index how Hong Kong was “a city being ripped apart”.
2018 was the same year that the FT journalist Victor Mallet had his working visa denied after chairing a talk with Andy Chan, a pro-independence political activist. This marked the start of more aggressive action towards journalists at international media, who until then had mostly been shielded from the threats that their local counterparts had faced. Two years on and, as Index has covered in its map on media violations during Covid-19, China recently expelled a handful of journalists at the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal whose credentials were up for renewal this year. In an unprecedented move, they were not allowed to work from Hong Kong or Macau either.
But no matter how bad it has become in the city over the years, it has always remained far more free than across the border in China. The city was not, and is still not, behind the Great Firewall. The city is a place where until this year large-scale Tiananmen Square vigils are held, a place that even had a museum dedicated to the massacre (read our article with the curator here). It is a place where millions come out year after year to fight for their freedoms.
“Protest remains a fundamental part of the Hong Kong identity,” said Dapiran, who believes that this “spirit will continue”.
And even as peaceful protest turned into scenes of police violence, the demolition of freedoms was not a given. Until now.
Hong Kong matters. It matters to the more than seven million who live there. The offer by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to grant visas to three million people from Hong Kong is a welcome gesture, but moving is not an option for most. What of those who speak little or no English? What of those without the financial means to move abroad? What of those who have elderly relatives in Hong Kong? What of those who see Hong Kong as their home?
Hong Kong matters to the 1.4 billion just across the border. If people in Hong Kong can’t speak up then what hope is there for those in mainland China?
“Throughout the decades Hong Kong has always been a clearing house for information to make its way back into the mainland news ecosystem,” Louisa Lim, who reported from China for a decade for NPR and the BBC, told Index.
Last year, the Chinese journalist Karoline Kan wrote in the magazine that despite the best attempts by the Chinese government to block news on the Hong Kong protests word was still reaching people in China. And the news was sending a powerful message. These messages end if Hong Kong is silenced.
And Hong Kong matters to the rest of the world. On 27 January a cartoon by Niels Bo Bojesen appeared in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten that portrayed coronavirus particles in place of the stars on the national flag of China. The Chinese embassy in Copenhagen demanded a public apology. Fortunately Danish politicians were vocal in their defence of the paper. Will we continue to see such defences of free expression? Or will acquiescence when it comes to Hong Kong embolden China further and erode our resilience?
Ma Jian wrote in the 1997 Index special that “from 1 July, the drift begins: Hong Kong becomes a floating island, migrating on the map.”
Today is a terrible day, but tomorrow is a new one. We all need to make sure that we raise our voices – individually and collectively – so that Hong Kong remains an island both spiritually and physically separated from China’s mainland.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]
