The national security law hasn’t brought back the old Hong Kong. Rather, it has created a new, unfamiliar place

Peace has been restored to the city, but at what cost when people cannot even place floral tributes outside an MTR station?
The new law has only instilled fear and Hong Kong can never be at peace with itself until the underlying causes of last summer’s uprising are addressed

Michael Chugani

Published: 9:15am, 3 Sep 2020

Why you can trust SCMP

Peace has returned to the city. No more black-clad protesters hurling petrol bombs at tear-gas-firing riot police. Our chief executive, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, gives credit to the Beijing-imposed national security law, claiming it has brought back the Hong Kong we were familiar with.

Wrong. The mass protests are gone but the security law has not restored the old Hong Kong. It has created a new and unfamiliar one. In the Hong Kong that was, people could place flower tributes, like they tried to do on Monday at Prince Edward MTR station, without police intervention.

I don’t believe anyone died when police stormed the station last August 31. But why prevent Hongkongers from placing floral tributes? I believe the tribute would have been peaceful, but police showed up in force, warning that even shouting “five demands, not one less” could violate the security law.

That’s not the Hong Kong we know. Nor is shoving a pregnant woman to the ground, as police reportedly did during a scuffle with protesters. But remnants of the old Hong Kong were on display when thousands showed up to place flowers, unafraid of the new law.

Lam candidly told a Beijing-friendly Hong Kong-based television station that she is an administrator who doesn’t understand politics, and could not have predicted that her now-dead extradition bill would spark an uprising.

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People gather in Mong Kok to mark one year since MTR station violence

Let’s call her the administrator-in-chief then. But even a politically clueless administrator should have foreseen trouble when an estimated one million Hongkongers, then an estimated two million, marched peacefully against the bill, not to mention the reservations voiced by business groups.

What about her cabinet comprised of top government officials and outside advisers? Weren’t there any among them politically savvy enough to warn against the bill, or did she not listen?

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The painful summer last year should have provided enough lessons for our administrator about the political pitfalls of speaking too cockily. But the humility she briefly showed at the height of the protests, when she admitted her missteps, has been replaced with arrogance.

When some well-known health experts recently doubted the usefulness of citywide coronavirus testing, she called them “so-called” experts. Two days ago, she debunked the widely held assumption that Hong Kong has “separation of powers”, even though our top judges have emphasised this principle since the handover.

Lam faulted people for citing judges who stated there was “separation of powers”, dismissing such claims as a misunderstanding of the Basic Law. Is she saying Hong Kong’s top judges don’t understand the Basic Law?

This is what Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma Tao-li said in a 2014 speech: “The Basic Law sets out clearly the principle of the separation of powers between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, and in quite specific terms, the different roles of the three institutions.”

Who do you think has a better grasp of the Basic Law, our top judge or our chief administrator? The phrase “separation of powers” is not in the Basic Law but several clauses clearly imply it.

Some of what Lam said in her TV interview proved her admission of how little she understands the politics of Hong Kong. She criticised the parents who took their children to the protests, pledging to educate them.

She accused the media of unbalanced reporting but said it would be hard to rectify their mistakes as Hong Kong is an open society with press freedom. She wanted the media to rectify their mistakes themselves by being more balanced.

Educate parents? Rectify mistakes? Isn’t that Chinese communist jargon? What yardstick of balance should Hong Kong’s media use? That of the Hong-Kong-based Beijing-friendly TV station that interviewed her?

We need to dispel Lam’s claim that the security law has brought back the old Hong Kong. It has only instilled fear without addressing the underlying causes of last summer’s uprising. Hong Kong can never be at peace with itself until we face up to why youngsters hurled petrol bombs, why millions marched, and why some believe people died during the police storming of Prince Edward MTR station.

An independent inquiry may bring back the Hong Kong familiar to us. The security law will not.

Michael Chugani is a Hong Kong journalist and TV show host

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