HONG KONG (SE): The diocesan Justice and Peace Commission issued a statement on April 18 demanding the Hong Kong government to stop the arrests of people accused of allegedly organising or joining unlawful protests, from August to October last year, sparked by the now-withdrawn Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation Bill 2019.
At least 15 people, including well-known political figures, were arrested.
Hong Kong’s Security Bureau issued a statement on April 18, claiming that the arrests were made based on evidence from investigations and in strict accordance to the law, regardless of the backgrounds of the arrested and that the police would handle the cases impartially in accordance with the law.
Italian Father Gianni Criveller of the Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions, who spent several years in Hong Kong before moving back to Italy, wrote on his Facebook page: “I remember seeing the most well known among them, the 81-year-old lawyer Martin Lee, the popular ‘father of Hong Kong democracy,’ addressing the people of Hong Kong from the balcony of parliament (the Legislative Council) asking for democracy on the night of the handover, on July 1, 1997. Lee, who participated in the drafting of the Hong Kong constitutional charter, had never been prosecuted before. Saturday he said he was proud to share the fate of many brave young men arrested for democracy.”
The commission condemned the arrests, calling them political persecutions. It demanded the government stop all arrests until the establishment of an independent commission to investigate incidents related to the now-withdrawn extradition bill.
It also called on the government to repeal the Public Order Ordinance which infringes on people’s freedom of public assembly and procession.
The law dates back to 1967 and the leftist riots which were inspired by the Cultural Revolution, and has been amended 26 times. It views a gathering of more than three people without the permission of police as “unauthorised.”
Lastly, the commission called for the police to immediately return the mobile phones of all arrested persons in order to ensure their privacy.
The post on Father Criveller’s Facebook page said: “It is as if they had arrested non-violence champions such as Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Steve Biko, Father Lorenzo Milani (the latter did not end up in prison just because he died before the sentence). They too went through trials for violating some laws.”
Hong Kong Watch also issued a statement on April 18, saying that the arrests “represent a concerted effort by the Chinese Communist Party to use the world’s focus on the Covid-19 pandemic to strangle dissent in the city.”
The rights group said the arrests showed Beijing is in pursuit of absolute control in Hong Kong, considering that the police actions came in the same week that the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government insisted that its authority was not restricted by Article 22 of the Basic Law which states that no Chinese government department can interfere in the affairs of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Later on April 21, the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office seemed to confirm the speculation by issuing three statements at the same time asserting that the authority of the liaison office to supervise the correct implementation of the One Country, Two Systems principle, supporting the police in their arrests of pro-democracy figures and condemning pro-democracy lawmakers for paralysing the Legislative Council.
