On the 14th, the trial of pro-democracy activist Tam Tak-chi will resume in Hong Kong. He is charged with 14 crimes, including “speaking seditious words”, disorderly conduct in a public place, and holding or calling an unauthorized meeting.
It would be just another case of persecution of political dissidents by the Chinese regime, but the case against Tam has a difference: he is the first defendant accused of sedition (insurrection against established authority) in Hong Kong since the end of the colonial era, in 1997, when the United Kingdom returned the territory to China.
Beginning in 1914, the colonial government issued sedition decrees and regulations to silence pro-British departure activists, censor publications, and arrest political dissidents. However, from the end of the 1960s onwards, although part of these norms remained in force, they ceased to be applied.
Even after the return of the territory to China, the new administration of Hong Kong continued without resorting to sedition laws. However, that changed after the enactment of the new national security law, imposed by Beijing in June 2020, a response to the pro-democracy protests carried out in the territory since the previous year.
In an article on The Diplomat website, Eric Lai, a researcher on Hong Kong law at the Center for Asian Law at the American University of Georgetown, cited, in addition to the lawsuit against Tam, the arrests of local citizens for displaying pro-democracy messages on banners and stickers. , as well as the absurd case of five members of the General Union of Speech-Language Pathologists of Hong Kong arrested in July for having published a series of children’s books with the story of a group of sheep who defend their villages from wolves.
They were accused of conspiracy to “print, publish, distribute or display seditious publications,” inciting hatred of the government and the judiciary among children.
“Two implications stem from the rebirth of sedition laws in Hong Kong. First, it represents an expansion of the city’s censorship regime. Self-censorship has been present in local media for many years. However, since the enactment of the national security law, the political authority has become more active in censoring divergent opinions in various fields,” Lai wrote.
“The use of sedition laws also implies that Hong Kong society will be further undermined by the integration of the new national security law with the many preexisting draconian laws”, analyzed the researcher. “Although the former colonial administration has refrained from enforcing the sedition law since the 1970s, Hong Kong’s new government has finally given up its self-restraint to resurrect this draconian law.”
In October, the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights expressed concern over the arrest of Chow Hang-Tung, a pro-democracy activist and human rights defender in Hong Kong, on charges of “inciting subversion” and being a foreign agent.
“Accusations of terrorism and sedition are being misused to stifle the exercise of fundamental rights, which are protected by international law, including freedom of expression and opinion, freedom of peaceful assembly and the right to participate in public affairs,” noted the commissioner in communicated.
The report highlighted that crimes of terrorism and subversion of national security are strictly defined by international law. “These labels should not be applied to crimes that do not meet the limits provided for in existing international norms”, pointed out the United Nations experts.
“The trivialization of the seriousness of terrorist acts and sedition crimes, when governments misuse them to justify the repression of internal differences, the limits to protests and restrictions on criticism by civil society and human rights defenders, is deeply worrisome” , they added.
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