ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 395: HOW MUCH WOULD *YOU* PAY FOR NATIONAL SECURITY?
The reception to Beijing’s plan to slap a National Security Law (NSL) on Hong Kong in the name of “urgency” - and the HK police’s reaction to that reception - has been about what you’d expect.
Of course, not everyone is freaking out about the NSL. Quite a lot of people welcome it, and have been going around making very conspicuously public statements saying so. Every govt department head has been releasing statements supporting the law - each and every one of them verbatim copies of each other apart from the dept name and corresponding serial number. So you know they’re sincere.
Meanwhile, Beijing officials, HK govt officials and pro-Beijing editors and pundits have spent the last few days making public statements or publishing op-eds assuring everyone (especially the international community) that their fears are unfounded. There is nothing to worry about. All is well.
And so on.
Pretty much all of them boil down to the same basic points:
1. Everyone has national security laws, why can’t we?
2. The NSL will only apply to a tiny, miniscule minority of people. If you are not one of them, you have nothing to fear.
3. The NSL will bring peace and harmony to HK, and all this political turmoil will be a thing of the past, and we can get on with our lives and the economy can recover and everything will be awesome.
I’m not kidding about the last one. Here’s our first CE Tung Chee-hwa saying it. And here’s SCMP columnist Alex Lo calling the NSL a “masterstroke” that means “Hong Kong can now be depoliticised and get back to reviving its economy and improving people’s lives”.
Zounds! Imagine that. Years of polarized politics, frustration at the broken promises of universal suffrage, mistrust of the police, and fears of being “disappeared”, magically wiped away just like that by this one law.
“Well, why didn’t they say so earlier?” etc.
As you might imagine, I find their reassurances rather unreassuring. And one reason (of many) is that not a single one of these people has said exactly HOW the NSL will bring peace and harmony.
Seriously: how? I want one of these people to please spell out for me in detail how NSL will accomplish this in a way that isn't scary or alarming.
None have. I think I can guess why.
I’ve noticed that statements and op-eds opposing the NSL have gone into great detail as to why it’s a bad idea and means the end of One Country Two Systems, giving historical and contemporary context, with numerous examples of how “national security” could be (and already has been) abused in China and elsewhere to stifle and punish opposition.
See for example this column from Cliff Buddle, which ran in SCMP the same day Alex Lo’s column did. He makes a detailed and thoughtful analysis (that saves me a great deal of typing) explaining why there’s good reason to worry about the NSL, and to doubt Beijing’s claims that it will be very narrowly applied.
By contrast, Alex Lo’s column doesn’t back up his assertion at all. He doesn’t explain how the NSL will depoliticize HK, end the protest violence and go back to normal. It simply will. As if the entire problem all along was that we didn't have Draconian enough laws to deal with these punks throwing petrol bombs in the streets. Now that we’re going to have one, problem solved and we can all get along.
There are various reasons for the gaping plot hole in such declarations. For one thing, the people making them are under no obligation to defend their conclusions. It’s not like the law won’t passed if not enough people are convinced that it’s necessary, so why make an effort to back your argument?
For another, the point of these statements is really to be seen publicly declaring sworn loyalty to the new regime. These people know where the power lies, and like good Quislings they’re making sure the Powers That Be point the NSL crosshairs at someone else.
Also, at least for now, no one wants to say the quiet part out loud - the NSL will bring about peace and harmony by using the strong arm of radical law enforcement to terrify the opposition into silence and make examples of anyone who resists.
Voilà: peace and harmony.
This is what China does with its malcontents - this is what the HK govt and its supporters want for HK.
They'll say they don't, of course. And you know, I’m sure many of them imagine in their heads that we’ll still have the same freedoms (or at least they will, because they don't harbour verboten political beliefs, so same thing, really). And maybe some of them actually believe the NSL will be only used against the most violent radicals, and that once those people are dealt with, everyone will be right as rain.
In reality, it's a classic case of trading liberty for security without the slightest understanding just what the price of that security will be. Or maybe they do - and they’re okay with that as long as it’s someone else paying that price.
I wonder how they’ll feel if the price becomes higher than they expected, and where they might draw the line - midnight house raids? Disappearing journalists? Xinjiang-style re-education camps? Tiananmen 2.0?
Welp. We’ll find out.
The price of everything and the value of nothing,
This is dF
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