The stringent Hong Kong law will apply overseas also
When the New York Times management announced that it was moving part of its Hong Kong bureau to Seoul amid growing concern about the impact of new national security laws on the freedom and safety of the press, little it knew was location did not matter to escape the stringent law.
Politicians, diplomats, bankers, students, activists around the world risk arrest under a new national-security law in Hong Kong. The law could impose life imprisonment for conduct Beijing sees as threatening, no matter where it takes place.
Chinese authorities have called the new law, which was kept secret until it was set in place, a commonplace legal measure to respond to protect the city and China from threats of secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign influence.
“China’s sweeping new national security law in Hong Kong has created a lot of uncertainty about what the new rules will mean to our operation and our journalism,” the New York Times management had said. “We feel it is prudent to make contingency plans and begin to diversify our editing staff around the region.”
Hong Kong’s status as one of Asia’s most thriving press hubs appears to be on life support with the onset of a new national security law imposed by China on the semi-autonomous territory this week. For now, the entry of foreign journalists into Hong Kong has been complicated by the Coronavirus pandemic; but, once the pandemic is over, some journalists say they’re not confident when they can return.
But escaping from Hong Kong would not be the only solution. The law applies to any act considered a violation, even if it is committed outside Hong Kong by someone who is not a resident.
Less uncertain is the law’s potential application to those who are outspoken overseas. Its worldwide reach means that “much of the U.S. Congress, the European Parliament, the British government, the United Nations and others too would be guilty,” Benedict Rogers, an activist who is deputy chair of the British Conservative Party’s human-rights commission, wrote in Hong Kong’s Apple Daily.
Rogers has himself already been blocked from coming to Hong Kong. For Chinese authorities, the law “is designed to send a message to the world that they want to go after critics well beyond their borders,” he said, adding “we know the Chinese Communist Party has a track record of defining subversion as anything it doesn’t like.”
