As some politics-leaning social and industry-based organizations disbanded over the past few weeks, or are facing the prospect of dissolution in the near future, accusations are in the air that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government is mounting crackdowns on organized pro-opposition groups. Such an imagined scenario is being promoted by groups exploiting the hardened tone of State media on the Chinese mainland regarding offenses committed by such politically biased bodies and a pledge by the head of the Hong Kong police to hunt for violations of the National Security Law for Hong Kong. In the case of the abrupt resolution by the leaders of the Professional Teachers’ Union to end the union, “concerns” have since been orchestrated over the future of activist groups amid an “increasingly difficult environment”, which has misled some people into believing that people’s freedoms are being curtailed.
This is a fallacy which calls for a redoubled effort on the part of the SAR government to set the record straight on what has happened. First, the decision to step out of business — in both instances of the PTU and the Civil Human Rights Front, an umbrella group behind many protest rallies — was made by the opposition bodies themselves based probably on their own assessments of the circumstances surrounding their existing work portfolios. The PTU explicitly drew on the “changing social, economic and political environments, especially in recent weeks” in explaining its unanticipated decision to disband, saying that the leadership could not find a “feasible” solution among the “many options” it scrutinized but did not account for in any detail.
The disintegration of the CHRF came on the heels of the declared breakup of the PTU on Aug 10, and it was said that the organization had no alternative but to discontinue, given that its key leader was sentenced to prison and its affiliated member groups dropped from 48 to 10 as a result of a massive pullout. The resolve to go into closure was made independently in both the PTU and the CHRF cases, although it was believed that they might find it subjectively hard to “continue to survive under the current political pressure”. The PTU was denounced as a professional organization by the Education Bureau over its record of unconcealed engagement in political activism, which was deemed unacceptable. For instance, it openly urged teachers and students to skip classes at the height of the violent protests in 2019.
On the law enforcement side, the police commissioner vowed that “thorough investigations” will be conducted into any violations by the teachers’ union under the security law. And pending the release of its inquiry details, the police asked the CHRF in April for its funding sources, its role in a petition handed to the United Nations calling for an international investigation into claimed police brutality during the anti-extradition riots in 2019, as well as the reasons for its noncompliance with the obligatory registration with the government under the Societies Ordinance. Conversely, the organization argued that it was not obliged to respond to such questions since it had never been asked about its status since it was established in September 2002.
Hard-pressed by the need to preclude any recurrence of the social disturbances and street violence that devastated the city in 2019, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee promulgated the National Security Law for Hong Kong on June 30, 2020, which bans acts of subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces. Swiftly restoring peace and stability in the city, this law applies to all social bodies regardless of their political stances. If an organization does not commit such misdeeds, there is no reason for it to feel compelled to give up its lawful endeavors. The front mounted large-scale defiance rallies on July 1 (the HKSAR’s founding anniversary) every year — except in 2020 — since 2003, when it organized a mass rally to oppose the proposed legislation according to Article 23 of the Basic Law. To persist with the customary practice of hosting the July 1 open protest by its member organizations, the CHRF filed an application for the same event last year despite the pandemic-induced rules restricting large gatherings, which rendered the petition objectionable to the police on public health grounds. This year, for the first time since its inception, the political front did not organize the same mass rally, on the grounds of the recent 18-month imprisonment of its convener over an unauthorized massive protest in 2019 and an ongoing investigation into its legality.
In either case, the non-continuation of the prescribed ventures by the organizations in question was entirely self-determined and should not be pursued with an imputation of guilt to the authorities. If the mass activities conducted in their names are all law-abiding, it does not stand to reason for them to stop for good, let alone imply that the SAR government, and even Beijing, were involved in the dissolution exercise.
The issue boils down to a clear and indispensable differentiation between the hidden agenda driving the work of the political organizations in disguise and the legitimacy of such entities and their dominant activities. As the SAR’s chief executive, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, has put it, the recent operational shutdown of the social and trade bodies in question has nothing to do with freedoms per se. It is rather a question of whether such community or trade associations are pursuing subversive political agendas while disguised as civil groups, and whether such agendas have taken precedence over professional interests and other fundamental missions with which the groups started out. This is a most important issue on which the authorities are to communicate unmistakably and effectively with the general public, who might be subject to the detraction manipulated by people with untold motives. It is only with the wider community being able to comprehend the intricacies at play that the political farce undermining public faith in the government will come to a standstill.
The author is a member of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.