Day: July 5, 2021

National security police in Hong Kong will show no leniency in an ongoing crackdown on dissent and political opposition in the city, China’s security czar for Hong Kong warned on Monday.

Speaking after Hongkonger Leung Kin-fai stabbed a police officer before killing himself on July 1, the anniversary of the 1997 handover to China, Zheng Yanxiong, the hardline head of the Beijing’s National Security Administration in Hong Kong, said there should be no quarter given to protesters.

“We are no longer talking about a pro-democracy movement, calls for autonomy or freedom of speech,” Zheng said. “[We are talking about] the total subversion of the government and a violation of national sovereignty.”

“Extreme activities like rioting and hype have evolved into cruelty, and there can be no illusions or compromise when it comes to seriously anti-social crimes,” Zheng told a national security forum in Hong Kong on Monday. “There can be no quarter given to those who would take advantage, only the fight against them; only the law.”

Chen Dong, deputy director of Beijing’s Central Liaison Office in Hong Kong, said the attack showed that “the anti-China forces that disrupt Hong Kong have yet to be completely cleaned up.”

“Some people with ulterior motives even brazenly support and beautify violent behavior,” Chen said. “Some groups and individuals are still engaged in activities that disrupt Hong Kong, under the cloak of legal profession.”

His comments came after a court denied bail to barrister and rights activist Chow Hang-tung, who is accused of “inciting” others to take part in activities commemorating the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen massacre.

Criminalizing mourning
The stabbing incident is now under investigation by the national security police. The officer is now in a stable condition following the attack.

Police said the public shouldn’t “glorify, romanticize, make heroic and even rationalize blatant violence” by mourning the 50-year-old man’s death.

“It will incite further hatred, divide the society and eventually breach social order and endanger public safety, threatening everyone in Hong Kong,” secretary for security Chris Tang warned. “Members of the public should remain rational … and not tolerate or glorify violence.”

University of Hong Kong law professor Johannes Chan said the violence itself should be condemned, but questioned the legality of criminalizing mourners.

“There are many missing steps [in their logic],” he said, adding that the ‘red lines’ could easily be changed by officials under the current system.

“Today, they may say that calling [the man who died] a martyr is incitement, and tomorrow something else could be considered incitement,” he said.

University of Hong Kong social work professor Paul Yip said the appropriate mode of investigation for the man’s suicide would be the coroner’s court.

“If it were to go through the Coroner’s Court, we would gain a clearer understanding of the incident, which would be much better,” Yip said.

“Citizens will have different feelings about this incident, and they should be allowed to express their grief in appropriate ways,” he said. “To grieve isn’t necessarily to identify with the attacker’s behavior; it could be a form of grief for the city generally.”

National Security Law for Hong Kong
Leung, 50, died outside the Sogo Department Store last Thursday night after stabbing himself in the chest. Local media reports said he had left a suicide note criticizing a draconian national security law imposed on Hong Kong a year earlier by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The note was critical of the police and contained views on how the national security law had undermined people’s freedom, government broadcaster RTHK cited sources as saying

China’s imposition of the national security law on Hong Kong from July 1, 2020 has been widely criticized by foreign governments and rights organizations as a means for the authorities to roll back human rights protections that were promised to the city’s seven million inhabitants under the terms of the 1997 handover.

The law criminalizes public dissent and publications critical of the government, and has led to an ever-widening crackdown on opposition lawmakers, rights activists, and journalists critical of Chinese and Hong Kong officials.

Defendants under the law are often denied bail, and cases brought under the law are heard by a panel of hand-picked judges, rather than by a jury, as was previously the norm in the Hong Kong legal system.

Hong Kong’s police force were also strongly criticized for excessive use of force during the 2019 protest movement, and for curbing citizens’ right to assemble and protest peacefully.

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The media landscape in Hong Kong following the forced closure of the Apple Daily bears a striking resemblance to that of Shanghai after the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took power in 1949, a veteran Chinese journalist told RFA.

Essayist and former Beijing-based editor Ling Cangzhou, who now lives in the United States, told RFA that he saw strong parallels between an ongoing crackdown on press freedom in Hong Kong since the CCP imposed a national security law on the city, and the early days of the People’s Republic of China in Shanghai.

“[They want] everyone to keep quiet and only say things that agree with the government … so as to keep the authorities happy by making it easier for them to rule,” Ling said.

“The situation for the media in Hong Kong right now is pretty similar to the situation in 1949 Shanghai,” he said. “Back then, the CCP didn’t get rid of all of the newspapers and publishing companies … right away: it took a while. Not all publishers were dealt with immediately.”

“Looking at Shanghai in 1949 and the direction Hong Kong is going in right now, it will wind up the same as mainland China; it will be assimilated,” Ling said in an interview shortly after Hong Kong police arrested Fung Wai-kong, managing editor and chief opinion writer for shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily’s English website, at the airport on suspicion of “colluding with a foreign power” under the national security law.

Fung, who wrote under the pen-name Lo Fung, was released on bail following his arrest.

“The fact that Fung Wai-kong was arrested at the airport doesn’t send a good message about press freedom in Hong Kong, or in the rest of the world,” Ling said.

His warnings were in keeping with those from journalists in Hong Kong, who say more and more people working for media organizations are likely to be targeted for arrest under the draconian national security law imposed by China one year ago.

Purges and deletions
Allan Au, who was fired by government broadcaster RTHK from his current affairs show Open Line Open View last month after hosting it for 11 years, said there is currently a purge under way at the station following a change of senior management and a new supervisory structure, both of which were imposed by the government earlier this year.

RTHK’s Programme Staff Union has warned that balancing, critical voices are now disappearing from the airwaves, with the scrapping of two programs, the culture-focused RTHK Talk Show and current affairs talk show This Week.

Stand News, an online news service where Chan works as deputy assignment editor, deleted its commentary and op-ed articles after Fung’s arrest, which came after the arrests of two other columnists for the now-defunct Apple Daily, with police citing dozens of the paper’s articles as evidence for the charges.

As Stand News was deleting articles, online media 852 Post removed its videos from its YouTube channel, describing the political atmosphere in Hong Kong as “akin to a black rainstorm warning or a No. 10 typhoon signal.”

The website Winandmac later announced it would relocate out of Hong Kong, to evade the ongoing crackdown on the media by the CCP.

Ling agreed, saying the old days of Hong Kong’s wide-ranging and freewheeling press were now over.

“The old Hong Kong, the one with press freedom, with freedom of publication and free speech has gone now,” he said. “There’s no longer much difference between Hong Kong and the rest of China.”

He said the next step could be to remove Hongkongers’ free access to the internet outside the Great Firewall of government censorship.

“It’ll happen very soon,” Ling said. “Very soon, Hongkongers won’t be able to watch overseas news channels like CNN … They won’t be available.”

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Authorities in the northern Chinese province of Hebei have detained activist and writer Pang Jian on suspicion of “splitting the country.”

Pang, 30, who writes under the pen-name Gao Yang, was detained by police in Hebei’s Gaobeidian city in January at his home in Pangcheng village.

His detention came after he reported on forced demolitions and evictions in rural areas around Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, his father Pang Jingxian told RFA in a recent interview.

“They have been doing coronavirus testing around here lately, and he went to line up [to get tested],” Pang Jingxian said. “Somehow, I’m not sure exactly how, the police detained him while he was there.”

“Then the police came and searched our home, looking through Pang Jian’s stuff,” he said. “They took it all away, and we didn’t hear anything for a while.”

Later, police sent a notice of detention and a notice of formal arrest to Pang Jingxian, and were dated Jan. 15 and Jan. 28 respectively, Pang’s father said.

“After they notified me, I went to visit him a few times, but we haven’t heard anything since then,” he said.

According to the notice of detention, Pang Jian was criminally detained on suspicion of “inciting secession” at 11.00 a.m. on Jan. 15, 2021.

Both notices gave his place of detention as Gaobeidian Detention Center.

Documenting Catholic churches
But Pang’s family have not been able to contact him there, Pang Jingxian told RFA.

“We can’t get a hold of him now, and we haven’t found a lawyer,” he said.
Pang is also a Catholic church member, and had written about Hebei’s extensive Catholic church community and unique culture, according to his U.S.-based friend Ryan Shi.

“He took photos of almost all of the Catholic churches in Hebei, as well as local customs and architectural features,” Shi told RFA.

Pang had also featured in Hong Kong media talking about Hebei’s underground Catholic community.

His U.S.-based friend Cai Quan said she had believed he was either detained or in an accident after his phone went offline some time in March.

“Maybe he is in some kind of illegal detention,” Cai said.

An employee who answered the phone at the Gaobeidian Detention Center on July 3 said Pang is still being held there on suspicion of “inciting secession.”

Asked about Pang’s health and wellbeing, the employee said it was “very good,” with no mental health issues.

The employee said Pang isn’t allowed visits due to the coronavirus.

“They can’t visit right now,” the employee said. “One reason is that the case isn’t yet closed, and the other is the coronavirus situation, so no visits are allowed.”

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As of July 4 evening, 46,675 COVID-19 rapid antigen test kits have been sold to 210 companies and institutions, according to the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications (MPTC).
The ministry continued that it had received a total of 745 requests for 262,775 test kits, but only the companies and institutions with many staff and are located in high-risk areas or involved in COVID-19 cases were the priorities.
MPTC will deal with other purchase requests in accordance with the above priorities and with the remaining stock of equipment and additional imports.
MPTC recently announced to sell one COVID-19 rapid antigen test kit for US$3.7 to end-users. The price set was exactly that spent by the government to buy the kits from South Korea – there is no additional cost to it, the ministry underlined.
The move was made following a direction from Prime Minister Samdech Akka Moha Sena Padei Techo Hun Sen to capacitate and enable the private sector to run the rapid testing for COVID-19 for their staff in order to timely and better contain possible outbreak of COVID-19.
As of yesterday, Cambodia’s COVID-19 tally rose to 54,291, of which 46,740 have recovered and 720 have lost their lives.

Source: Agency Kampuchea Press