China, on Tuesday local time, released the text of a new law that introduces broad-sweeping restrictions against the people of Hong Kong.
The law includes criminal penalties for four unique types of violations. These include separatism (secession), subversion of state power, terrorist activities, and collusion with foreign entities. It also creates what is being called the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region National Security Preservation Commission, which will enforce these new rules. Decisions by the commission will not be subject to “judicial review.”
As an official English translation of the law has not yet been released, reporters and others have been slowly piecing together important aspects of the law for English-speaking individuals. China Law Translate has published a partial translation of the law. Other reporters appear to back up the relevant parts of this translation.
As far as punishments provisioned in the law, harsh prison sentences will be given to offenders. Organizers of crimes can be given terms of up to life in prison.
But what specifically constitutes a crime under this law is much more difficult to ascertain. The text is written quite broadly. It seems that the law’s potential for oppression comes more so from what it does not contain, rather than what it does contain. Because the law is relatively vague, with great room for interpretation, government dissidents can be targeted much more easily.
Article 22, Section 3, for example, plans to punish “any person [who] organizes, plans, carries out, or participates in carrying out” conduct that would be seen as “seriously disrupting, obstructing, or undermining the central government organs of the People’s Republic of China or Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s performance of their functions.”
Article 20, Section 2 plans to punish “any person [who] organizes, plans, carries out, or participates in the carrying out of … transferring the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region or any other part of the People’s Republic of China to foreign rule.”
The law also stipulated that with cases that involved “state secrets,” an open trial is not guaranteed. It is unclear what China means by “state secrets.”
However, the legislation promises China will still “protect human rights,” such as “freedoms of speech, press and publication, freedoms of association, assembly, procession and demonstration.”
China’s new national security law has already sent a chilling effect across the territory, with leaders of protest movements deciding to resign their positions. Once a British territory, Hong Kong was given back to China in 1997, with the agreement that the nation would allow Hong Kong to retain its current system for 50 years after that.
