The wonders of British human rights hypocrisy on Hong Kong never cease

While the UK called on the city to scrap its national security law, it was busy enacting its own draconian domestic versions

Alex Lo

Published: 9:00pm, 16 Nov 2023

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The shock reshuffle of the British ministerial cabinet with the return of David Cameron as foreign minister and the sacking of Suella Braverman as home secretary has naturally attracted most international media attention.

Braverman’s firebomb of a resignation letter has enough bile and poison in it to split the Tories. And everyone is thinking, will Cameron share another pint of beer with a Chinese leader and make nice with Beijing?

But if you are from Hong Kong, the sideways move from foreign to home secretary for James Cleverly is most intriguing. The man whose previous office has been criticising Hong Kong’s national security law for undermining human rights will now take over the very Home Office that has just legislated some of the toughest domestic security laws in the Western world, even blasted by the United Nations human rights chief and Amnesty International, among many other rights groups.

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First, just to remind ourselves what we are talking about, let’s have a look at a specific paragraph from Braverman’s very public poison pen of a letter to her boss, the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. It’s well worth reading in full to learn what has happened to the famous British manners even among the upper crust.

But since we are from Hong Kong, let’s just focus on this paragraph:

“I am proud of what we achieved together: delivering on our manifesto pledge to recruit 20,000 new police officers and enacting new laws such as the Public Order Act 2023 and the National Security Act 2023”, Braverman wrote. “I also led a programme of reform: on antisocial behaviour, police dismissals and standards, reasonable lines of inquiry … non-crime hate incidents …”

From early to midsummer, those two draconian laws of which she was so proud were enacted by her office. During that time, the Foreign Office issued one of those supercilious six-monthly reports on Hong Kong demanding the removal of the national security law.

In the forward to the report, Cleverly, then foreign secretary, wrote: “We have stood with our partners in condemning the steady erosion of civil and political rights and Hong Kong’s autonomy.”

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At about the same time, Cleverly was quoting the UN human rights office against Hong Kong, the chief of the very UN office published a scathing statement condemning the Public Order Act 2023.

“The Public Order Bill, which has now been passed by parliament in the United Kingdom, is deeply troubling legislation that is incompatible with the UK’s international human rights obligations regarding people’s rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said.

“This new law imposes serious and undue restrictions on these rights that are neither necessary nor proportionate to achieve a legitimate purpose as defined under international law. This law is wholly unnecessary as UK police already have the powers to act against violent and disruptive demonstrations.”

In other words, it may have contravened international laws.

“It is especially worrying that the law expands the powers of the police to stop and search individuals, including without suspicion; defines some of the new criminal offences in a vague and overly broad manner; and imposes unnecessary and disproportionate criminal sanctions on people organising or taking part in peaceful protests,” Turk added.

The UN rights chief was especially alarmed by the “Serious Disruption Prevention Orders [which] introduced by the law that allow UK courts to ban affected individuals from being in certain places at certain times; being with particular people; or using the internet in certain ways, and could lead to the individual in question being electronically monitored to ensure compliance. It is especially concerning that such orders can be made against people who have never been convicted of any criminal offence.”

Even Hong Kong’s national security law hasn’t gone this far!

“ … the grave risk here is that these orders pre-emptively limit someone’s future legitimate exercise of their rights,” the UN High Commissioner said by concluding, “The passage of this bill regrettably weakens human rights obligations, which the country has long championed in international forums. I call on the UK government to reverse this legislation as soon as feasible.”

As soon as feasible! You wonder if the Foreign Office didn’t just cut and paste the UN rights chief’s statement on to its six-monthly report on Hong Kong.

Rights vs security: whether Hong Kong or US, all must find their own balance

At the same time, the statement from Amnesty International doesn’t mince words: “The Public Order Bill finally passed the House of Lords. The bill will introduce yet more draconian powers to restrict people’s fundamental rights to peaceful protest. We know from history that without protest, there is no social progress.

“These new laws follow hot on the heels of last year’s protest restrictions contained in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. This act introduced new vague and undefined police and government powers to clamp down on any protests – including by one person.

“These measures are neither proportionate nor necessary and place the UK government in breach of its international obligations.”

Indeed! So while legal specialists from Cleverly’s latest office have been advising various law enforcement agencies to exercise those new laws, wouldn’t it be most ironic if Cameron’s own office kept on publishing those six-monthly reviews of Hong Kong using language directly taken from the UN and Amnesty?