Hong Kong’s Legislative Council yesterday unanimously approved the pending security law since its re-incorporation into China. This law establishes life imprisonment for sedition and high treason. Crimes specifically regulated by the new legislation, along with those of sabotage, espionage, theft of State secrets and foreign interference.
“We must legislate for the security of our country and Hong Kong. What has to come, will come. It doesn’t matter to us”, said the head of the legislative body, Andrew Leung. The so-called article 23 has been approved after just two weeks of debate and will enter into force this week.
Because of all this, for its detractors it is a gag law that degrades the freedoms of the ex-colony (liberties which, by the way, have never included the right to vote). For its defenders, on the other hand, it is the guarantee that there will not be another revolt like the one that paralyzed the city for months in 2019, with the looting of this same legislative chamber included.
In those days, more than one predicted a “Tiananmen-style” solution, with a military repression of the youth protest that would spread its expansive wave to Taiwan. Which would discredit, for several generations, any promise of reunification under the siren song of “one country, two systems”. Although nothing has been left to chance, this solution actually arrived yesterday, five years later. The turtle, as is known, is a symbol of wisdom in Chinese civilization.
This turtle has been set in motion once the Taiwan elections have passed, if nothing else, there were incentives to torpedo it. Then, everything happened at high speed, with the world hanging on Palestine and Ukraine. For thirty days the Hong Kong authorities exposed the draft law to the public for the introduction of suggestions. Quite slyly, as will be seen.
To justify the classification of new crimes, the project refers to articles practically copied from the legislation of the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States and Australia. The Chinese authorities could have given as an example the legal strangulation by India of the oenages that received foreign funds. But they have chosen to refer to the countries they consider to be the driving forces behind the destabilization of those months.
As proof of this they allude to the fact that, as soon as the covid lockdowns wreaked havoc and thousands of expatriates returned to their country of origin – or adoption – never to return, the protests did not go away revive again The revolts at the time were triggered by the project that allowed “extradition” to the continent for certain crimes, also related to foreign interference.
For Hong Kongers interested in a democracy they have never been able to taste, the legislation is a warning and a slap in the face, despite the many references to established democracies they admire. Many of them, in fact, are already in Taiwan, Singapore, the United States or the United Kingdom. But for a significant enough number of Hongkongers, it is a relief.
