Letters | To those who say China believes in Hong Kong human rights: where is Gao Zhisheng?

Hong Kong national security law (NSL)

Letters

Published: 7:30am, 30 Jun 2020

Why you can trust SCMP

Some of our so-called representatives of Hong Kong in the National People’s Congress pushed for the national security law, and our government and pro-Beijing politicians have exhorted us to support the law, claiming it would only target a few troublemakers and protect our human rights as before.

To those grannies who invited me to sign the petition to support the law, I ask: where is Gao Zhisheng?

Gao was a brave lawyer who defended the vulnerable in China’s courts. Since he started helping believers of Falun Gong, he was persecuted by the Beijing authorities, sentenced to jail and physically tortured for subverting the government. He was kept under repeated house arrest without going through any legal procedures.

In 2016, after releasing his book Stand Up China 2017, he was disappeared for more than 1,000 days. His wife and children had no idea whether he was alive or dead.

This is how the so-called law-abiding regime treats its dissidents. At the foundation of the Communist Party in the 1920s, it promised a more democratic and free China for our people but, as with most of its promises, it did the opposite and treated opponents and their families with brutality.

03:24

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They claim the national security law only targets a “small minority,” but how do they define this term? The regime and its yes-men use flowery words, promising that our freedoms and rights will remain the same. However, how do we know they will honour their promise when they treat dissidents so brutally now?

The faint hope of freedom for the last of China’s 709 lawyers behind bars

Don’t waste your time appealing to us to support this problematic law. Rather, ask Beijing to protect the human rights of all Chinese people, thereby proving that the law won’t destroy the freedoms of Hongkongers.

Beijing should at least answer this question: Where are Mr Gao and others who have been disappeared?

Henry Wong, Kennedy Town

US practice allows peaceful advocacy for independence

Lawmaker Ip Kwok-him has suggested that the new national security law for Hong Kong should follow the US model in having a maximum sentence of life imprisonment (“Those convicted under Hong Kong national security law could face life in prison”, June 28).

Is Mr Ip aware that peaceful advocacy of secession is lawful in the United States, and that the Texas Nationalist Movement, which campaigns for the complete independence of Texas from the United States, is a lawful organisation in the state of Texas?

As he is keen to follow American practice, does he accept that an organisation which peacefully campaigns for Hong Kong independence is not a threat to Chinese national security and should be lawful in Hong Kong under the Basic Law?

Paul Harris SC, founding chair, Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor

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