Five years of a strict national security law in Hong Kong : NPR
Five years ago, Beijing imposed a strict national security law in Hong Kong, which has effectively prohibited public dissent.
Leila Fadel, host:
Today is a big date for Hong Kong. In 1997, it was the last day of more than 150 years of British colonial domination on Hong Kong. After that, the United Kingdom has sold control in China. And five years ago today, Beijing prohibited most of the dissent to Hong Kong to suppress major pro-democracy demonstrations. Here is Emily Feng from NPR.
Emily Feng, a succule: In the five years which followed the entry into force of the National Security Act, the Hong Kong authorities tried to normalize it, teach it in public schools and popularize it with a rap song like this played in the broadcaster of public television of Hong Kong earlier this summer.
(Soundbit of archived registration)
Unidentified musical group: (Rapping in Cantonais).
Feng: The national security law protects the light from our city, these rap children. But people targeted by law say that it is anything but anodyne.
Baggio Leung: They make Hong Kong like China.
Feng: It’s Baggio Leung, activist and former legislator of Hong Kong. What he means was in 1997, when China took control of Hong Kong, the territory had to keep its civil rights and its law system. But Leung says that the stamp between continental China and Hong Kong has completely disappeared.
Leung: They broke the separation of Hong Kong and China.
Feng: Finn Lau, another Hong Kong activist living in exile, underlines, with the principles of the law codified in the Constitution of Hong Kong from last year, he now has a world range.
Finn Lau: Basically, as long as you are on this planet, you are affected by this Draconian law.
Feng: Like Leung, Lau was targeted under the law, even if he lives in London.
Lau: They issued international arrest warrants against myself. And after that, I faced different types of transnational repression, as being followed.
Feng: Joey Siu is a former leader leader of anti -government demonstrations in 2019, and also has a premium on the head of the Hong Kong National Security Police.
Joey Siu: They want to create this scary effect so deep and so important that even for us, people who are in the diaspora abroad, could not exercise our fundamental rights, you know, to expression.
Feng: Until now, more than 320 people have been arrested under the law in Hong Kong. And the authorities even apply it retroactively. Earlier in June, the pro-democracy activist imprisoned Joshua Wong was struck by a new national security accusation for the activities he would have undertaken more than four years ago. The new accusation could exercise his sentence in life imprisonment.
Emily Feng, NPR News.
(Soundbite of Gorillaz Song, “Hong Kong”)
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