Point of No Return: Mortal Combat over 1C2S’s Dead Body

The Citizens’ Press Conference called an emergency briefing on the latest development of the National Security decree today on 22 May to explicate its insertion into the Basic Law, and condemn its ambition to establish a national security apparatus in Hong Kong to crack down on the ‘high degree of autonomy’ and the pro-democracy movement ultimately. Legal scholar Mr Edward Wong at Law Lay Dream was invited to discuss the legal implications of NPCSC’s decision and its inconsistencies with the Basic Law. Our spokesperson, Mr Chan, described the situation as ‘worse than how Article 23 could have been’, and expected substantial international outcry over Beijing’s move. Wong, in turn, pointed out that the CCP’s insistence to land the decree onto Hong Kong does not only violate international human rights conventions, but also a constitutional document that they themselves had set. The Citizens’ Press Conference called for the US Secretary of State to reassess the Hong Kong separate customs territory and seriously consider ‘a wholesale repeal of the 1992 US-Hong Kong Policy Act’. Against the backdrop of China’s breach of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, Hongkongers would need to proactively explore options such as a second citizenship and right to abode for BNO holders, as well as to reflect the ground situation of Hong Kong to the international community.

Chan exemplified the ‘chilling effect’ that Article 23, introduced in 2009 in Macau, has on its civil life and how it ‘killed the vibrancy of Macau’s society’ even though it has never been invoked thus far. Over the past year, Hongkongers have ‘harnessed unprecedented power’ in our resistance to the CCP’s attempt to impose on Hong Kong what it has on Macau, and have managed to challenge the integrity of Communist China’s territory and the stability of the CCP’s rule, causing it proceed to ‘take down all that threatens its existence with an iron wrist ... despite its potential fall alongside those it tries to bring down’.

Chan pointed out that ‘Hong Kong would be but a piece of scorched earth under this National Security decree’ as all promises made by the CCP to Hong Kong fall into pieces. He lamented that ‘the CCP is destroying everything Hong Kong was built upon and all that builds it, including the qualities the people embody and their ethnic solidarity’. Furthermore, the announcement of the National Security laws also ‘brought a panic attack on the financial market’. With Hong Kong being an international financial centre, and having a ‘pivotal role’ in the Sino-US trade war, Chan worried that this systemic earthquake in Hong Kong would cause foreign investors to leave, and that Hong Kong will ‘lose its competitiveness as a free and open economy’ as a result.

In response to the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC)'s move to add National Security laws to Annex III of the Basic Law, legal scholar Edward Wong stated that the proposed National Security laws violate the Siracusa Principles under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which provides that only when ‘the existence of the nation or its territorial integrity or political independence against force or threat of force’ is jeopardised can a government invoke ‘national security’ to limit certain rights. ‘Prevent[ing] merely local or relatively isolated threats to law and order' is not within the scope of 'national security,’ he added.

He also pointed out that ‘terrorist activities’ under the National Security laws do not necessarily amount to threats to ‘the existence of the nation or its territorial integrity or political independence against force or threat of force’.

Wong opined that the NPCSC’s decision forces mainland laws upon Hong Kong, violating Article 18 of the Basic Law that creates a firewall between the laws of Hong Kong and China.

He quoted from Ji Pengfei at the 7th National People's Congress meeting, the vice chairman of the Basic Law Drafting Committee, that ‘only very limited national laws that are out of scope of Hong Kong's autonomy shall be added to Annex III and applied locally’. Wong emphasised that this should only be a ‘limited’ occurrence, not a normality.

Chan described Beijing’s move as ‘crude and untimely’, as they ‘no longer have any consideration for optics or morals, but expansionism and the engulfment of the rules based international order’. Yet Hongkongers have displayed the resolve to ‘let Hong Kong burn to the ground along with the CCP, and then build it back up from its ruins without the CCP’ in our resistance movement - if the CCP is willing to come down for a trip to hell with us, Hongkongers are more than happy to keep its company. However, Hongkongers would need to explain, within a very limited time, to the business world how the National Security decree ‘plunges the free market into the deep, that all would also fall victim to the CCP regime, and that this would hurt foreign corporates more than losing trade links with China’.

Chan reminded the audience to abstain from ‘thinking that one can linger around and live under the CCP’s inhumane authority’, and encouraged protesters to adapt to ‘the new environment in which we will continue our resistance from now on’. He continued, ‘Even if Hong Kong became fully swallowed by Communist China and we were all forced to flee, we must always remember that we are the people of freedom, and we will plant the seed of freedom wherever we roam, in whichever future that transpires.’

Chan expressed that even if we can no longer do it without fear, we must keep resisting totalitarian rule. He asserted that the ‘collective vision’ enshrined in the protest slogan ‘Liberate Hong Kong, the Revolution of Our Time’ is ‘an idea that is bulletproof’, that ‘the light of the flame we start will propagate through time and space’, and thus: ‘For our children, and their children, we must step up and fight back on every front by any means necessary.’

As a concluding remark, the Citizens’ Press Conference promises all that ‘so long as the last man is still standing, we will stand with you’, for the day on which ‘we will meet at the ‘bottom of the pot’, mask-free and triumphant, when our city is finally freed’.