Deputy Commissioner Edwina Lau, police supremo for national security Photo: CGTN
New measures to clamp down on dissidence are being announced almost daily by the Carrie Lam administration. Hong Kong is no longer the free, safe society it once was. People are leaving in droves — while they still can. To be sure you won’t suffer a dawn raid on your home by national security officials, local or mainlander, you should know what the limits are under the new law.
They amount to the Four Don’ts:
- Don’t advocate independence for Hong Kong from China
- Don’t work in any way to undermine the governments of Hong Kong or China
- Don’t encouraged politically motivated violence
- Don’t engage with foreign interests trying to get them to interfere in Hong Kong or mainland affairs.
If you fall afoul of the National Security Law, the officials whose minions may come after you are Edwina Lau Chi-wai, Deputy Commissioner in charge of the new police national security division and Zheng Yanxiong, a Beijing insider appointed by the State Council to lead the seven-months-old mainland national security enforcement office temporarily set up in a Causeway Bay hotel. This unit is responsible to the Chinese Communist Party and is not subject to Hong Kong jurisdiction.
EDWINA LAU CHI-WAI
A well as being the chief local enforcer of NSL, 55-year-old Edwina Lau sits on the Committee for Safeguarding National Security. The committee is responsible to the State Council. This month Carrie Lam gave Ms Lau a Chief Executive’s Commendation for her national security work, when Ms Lau was only just over six months into the job. The deputy commissioner, who has studied at Harvard and mainland universities, has served in most police departments as well as being a director of the HK Police College. She took office as HK tsar for national security two days after the NSL became law. Carrie Lam witnessed her swearing in.
If you would like to take a look at the steely deputy commissioner see this VIDEO.
ZHENG YANXIONG
Zheng Yanxiong, Beijing insider now bossing the mainland’s national security office in Hong Kong Photo: Global Times
Zheng, 57, now director of the Office for Safeguarding National Security in HK, was previously secretary-general of the Guangdong Provincial Communist Committee and a party official in Shanwei. He is known for denouncing foreign media reporting of the Wukan protests and a crackdown on demonstrations in Shanwei four years ago. A Cantonese speaker, Zheng was born in Shantou, Guangdong. He was educated at the Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine and the Sun Yat-sen University. In 1986 he joined the CCP and began his rise to power.
Metropark Hotel, Causeway Bay, temporary headquarters of the new mainland national security office Photo: Intellasia
Zheng is now comfortably set up with his growing cadre of enforcers in the Metropark Hotel, Causeway Bay. The hotel is also their living quarters. Soon after they moved in the building’s floor plans were removed from public records. Under the new law Zheng’s office is responsible for handling cases that are too complex or difficult or serious to be left to the local police.
Anyone who thinks he is now safe and can flout the new law with impunity because he has a foreign passport and can just up and leave, had better think again. He may go to the airport and find he can’t leave. The immigration director has put him on a blacklist. He may appeal to his consulate, only to find it gets him nowhere, because the government is moving to refuse to recognise dual nationality as it now done in China. He may find he has no consular protection.
“Two decades after transfer of power, time to enforce compliance is here,” Suzanne Pepper writes for Hong Kong Free Press. “Beijing’s main concern is to enforce new rules and eliminate all overt signs of resistance, both violent and non-violent.”
The first major action under the new law came with dawn raids on the homes of 53 of the Democrats’ main talents. Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee, Benny Tai and others were fingered.
The latest move as the CCP tightens its grip on Hong Kong society with Carrie Lam’s avid acquiescence is a move on SIM cards. Holders of such pre-paid cards must provide real name and proof of identity or face up to 14 years in prison. Telecommunication companies will have to hold the data for a year and law enforcers such as Mr Zheng’s troops can demand the information without a court warrant.
“The SIM card registration plan is the latest strategy. . . to sow fear and distrust in people’s everyday lives,” Sharon Yam wrote in HKFP.
A hotline has been set up so anyone can report, maliciously if they have a grudge, a real, imagined or fabricated threat to national security. Ms Yam wrote, “By now, as the government’s crackdown and raids intensify, most Hong Kongers understand that their workplaces and personal life are not safe from state surveillance and punishment.”
George Orwell: “Big Brother is watching you.” And again: “We are living in a world in which nobody is free, in which hardly anyone is secure, in which it is almost impossible to be honest and to remain alive.”
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