Day: September 9, 2022

Police in Hong Kong have arrested the head of the city’s journalists’ union on public order offenses, amid an ongoing crackdown on public dissent and peaceful political opposition under a draconian security law imposed by Beijing.

Ronson Chan, chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists’ Association (HKJA), was arrested while reporting on a meeting in Mong Kok relating to local people’s livelihood on Sept. 7, the union said in a statement on its website.

“Two plainclothes police officers at the venue stopped [Chan] and asked for his ID,” the statement said. “Just as Ronson Chan was about to show his ID to one of the female police officers, another plainclothes officer stepped forward and yelled at him to ‘cooperate.'”

“Chan asked the policeman to show his warrant card and asked the officer to confirm his full name and department, as he could only see the surname Tan,” the statement said. “But the officer immediately issued a warning, and, within a few minutes, had Chan in handcuffs under arrest, en route back to Mong Kok police station.”

Chan, who was arrested on suspicion of “obstructing a police officer” and “disorderly conduct in a public place,” was eventually released on bail after more than 11 hours in the police station, and must report back on Sept. 21.

“The HKJA deeply regrets and condemns the interception, arrest and brutal treatment of Ronson Chan by the police,” the group said. “He was cooperating with the police, yet he was still treated unreasonably and arrested.”

Chan, former deputy assignment editor at now-defunct pro-democracy news outlet Stand News, was re-elected as HKJA chairman in June.

He has frequently spoken out against ever-diminishing press freedom in the city.

He had been planning study journalism on a scholarship at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, and had been scheduled to leave Hong Kong at the end of September.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong said it was “concerned” over Chan’s arrest and was “monitoring the situation very closely.”

“Given Mr. Chan’s position as a prominent leader in Hong Kong’s journalism community, the FCC strongly urges the authorities to exercise transparency and care in handling Mr. Chan’s case,” it said.

“Hong Kong’s government has repeatedly told the public that Hong Kong’s right to press freedom and free speech … is not at risk. The FCC supports journalists’ right to cover stories without fear of harassment or arrest,” the statement said.

The statement won a rebuke from China’s foreign ministry, which said it constituted “interference with the rule of law” in Hong Kong.

“There is no absolute press freedom anywhere in the world that could be above law, and the identity of a journalist doesn’t mean they have amnesty or enjoy immunity for whatever they do,” the ministry’s representative office in Hong Kong said in a statement on its website.

“No one should engage in activities that damage Hong Kong’s stability under the name of journalism,” a spokesperson said in the statement, accusing the FCC of “taking every opportunity to attack the Hong Kong government and support anti-China forces.”

“Their tricks will bite the dust,” the statement said.

‘Seditious sheep’ authors

On the day of Chan’s arrest, a Hong Kong court found five speech therapists guilty of “conspiracy to print, publish, distribute, display or reproduce seditious publications” under colonial-era sedition laws that have gotten a new lease of life since the national security law took effect on July 1, 2020.

The five members of the Hong Kong Speech Therapists’ Union were prosecuted over a series of children’s books depicting “seditious” sheep, which the authorities said showed support for the 2019 protest movement and “incited hatred” towards the city’s government.

The two men and three women aged 25-28 were found guilty of “conspiring to publish seditious publications,” in connection with three children’s picture books titled “The Guardians of Sheep Village,” “The Garbage Collectors of Sheep Village” and “The 12 Heroes of Sheep Village.”

Police said the sheep were intended to represent protesters who fought back against riot police in 2019, and depicted the authorities as wolves, “beautifying bad behavior” and “poisoning” children’s impressionable minds.

One book characterizes the wolves as dirty and the sheep as clean, while another lauds the actions of heroic sheep who use their horns to fight back despite being naturally peaceful.

Maya Wang, a senior China researcher at the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), said the court verdict showed how quickly Hong Kong’s judicial system is growing similar to that in mainland China.

“Hongkongers used to watch news of people in mainland China getting prosecuted in ridiculous ways for writing political fables, but this is now happening in Hong Kong,” Wang said.

“The Hong Kong authorities should reverse this precipitous decline in [people’s] freedom and revoke the convictions of the five children’s book authors.”

The case is the first to see a conviction for “seditious publications” since 1967.

The crime of “sedition” — a common-law concept — was incorporated into Hong Kong’s Crimes Ordinance under the colonial-era government in 1938, and was originally aimed at prohibiting publications that might arouse hatred against the monarch.

Eric Lai, Hong Kong Law Fellow at the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, said the conviction of the “seditious sheep” authors suggests that freedoms in the city have now regressed to pre-war colonial times, and ignores recent recommendations from United Nations human rights experts that the city stop using “sedition” to prosecute people.

“The Hong Kong courts have ignored these timely and specific United Nations documents on the crime of sedition, which shows that they are totally unwilling to comply with … the views of international human rights experts,” Lai said.

Lai said the prosecution of speech crimes also contravenes the U.N.’s Johannesburg Principles, which state that the peaceful exercise of freedom of expression should never be viewed as a threat to national security, and should come free from restrictions or penalties.

“This verdict will have a big chilling effect on the publishing industry and the creative world, now that discussing current affairs through metaphors or allegory in a children’s book can be deemed to be inciting hatred of the government,” Lai said.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Without a military alliance Japan cannot defend itself but even with an alliance it still needs to strive to expand its defense capabilities, a leading Japanese security analyst has said.

At a virtual event held on Thursday at the Hudson Institute, a conservative U.S. think tank, Research Director of the Canon Institute for Global Studies Kunihiko Miyake spoke about lessons that Japan could draw from the ongoing war in Ukraine.

One of them was about the need to strengthen the U.S.-Japan military alliance, first signed in 1951 but now facing new threats including from China. 

He also spoke about the tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the role of Okinawa, the main island of Okinawa prefecture, located in the East China Sea between Taiwan and Japan’s mainland.

The U.S.-Japan alliance “has been evolving successfully,” Miyake said, adding that nevertheless Tokyo needs to develop an effective defense strategy.

“We need to increase the defense budget, expand defense spending and work on various contingency plans,” the Tokyo-based analyst said.

“We have more threats than the Europeans,” he said, implying that – besides Russia – Asian countries also need to deal with security threats from China and North Korea.

On Aug. 31, the Japanese Defense Ministry made its largest ever budget request of 5.59 trillion yen (U.S. $40.4 billion) for the 2023 fiscal year to deal with increased security challenges.

In June, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he intended to strengthen Japan’s defense capabilities “fundamentally over the next five years.”

Miyake, a former senior diplomat, said Japan “could do more with the Quad,” the security grouping that comprises the U.S., Japan, India and Australia, as well as strengthening cooperation with South Korea and with NATO.

Support for Taiwan

As tension rises in the Taiwan Strait, Japan realizes that “the stability of the situation surrounding Taiwan is also critical for Japan’s security,” according to Japan’s 2022 defense white paper.

Tokyo is considering boosting defenses on outlying islands in the southwest, with military facilities to be set up on some of the islands close to Taiwan.

Miyake, who is also the president of Japanese think tank the Foreign Policy Institute, said it is vital that the government and military get support from the residents of Okinawa in their campaign for a stronger Japan-U.S. alliance as well as to defend Japan from a possible Taiwan conflict.

Most of the U.S. military presence in Japan is on Okinawa but there has been widespread discontent amongst the population about U.S. military bases there, despite efforts to move them away from the island’s core areas.

To deal with new security threats from China, Miyake suggested an “increasing joint use of bases” by Japanese and U.S. forces in Okinawa.

U.S. government officials have been talking about the scenario of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

On Thursday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said during an interview there is “a distinct threat that there could be a military contingency around Taiwan.”

Sullivan told Bloomberg that the U.S. will “push back at any effort to change the status quo by force” by China.

Junta forces have been rounding up residents of a village in Myanmar’s southern Tanintharyi region, arresting more than 100 since Sept. 6, locals told RFA.

Troops entered Ba Wa Pin village in Dawei township at the start of the month, after fighting erupted between military council forces and local defense groups on the road to Htee Khee, which is on the Thai border.

Among the nearly 180 junta troops, local battalion Numbers 401, 402 and other joint forces are still stationed in the village, a member of the Ah Shae Taw (East Forest) People’s Defense Force (PDF) told RFA.

“Among the arrested are local villagers and displaced people from other villages. They arrested children and adults and are holding them hostage,” a local PDF member said.

“They [the junta forces] have another army column that is fighting with Kaw Thoo Lei’s army on the Dawei-Htee Khee road. They are planning to join that army column. They told us that if we start shooting, they will kill the villagers.”

RFA has not been able to independently verify these comments, and the State Administration Council (SAC) has not released any statement on the situation.

A local PDF has warned residents to stop using the road due to the ongoing fighting. The Kaw Thoo Lei Army is stationed on the border between Tanintharyi and Htee Khee.

At least 214 civilians have been killed and 89 injured in Tanintharyi region since last year’s coup, local research group Southern Monitor said at the end of last month.

It said at least 17,415 people had been forced to flee their homes, while 93 homes were destroyed in arson attacks since Feb. 1, 2021.

Residents of the region told RFA that armed resistance in the region picked up in Aug. last year in response to the junta’s crackdowns on civilians.