Hong Kong officials and supporters take the initiative to reassure everyone that the new National Security law will be wonderful and benign.
Justice Secretary Teresa Cheng says that she believes (and that’s good enough for me!) that the CCP-appointed Chief Executive will not pick biased Red-friendly puppet-judges to hear NatSec trials on a case-by-case basis. Instead, they will be chosen from a list of them that the CE will already have drawn up. We can therefore ignore former Chief Justice Andrew Li’s bleating about threats to judicial independence.
And along comes ‘heavyweight’ Tam Yiu-chung, who sits on the rubber-stamp body that passes Chinese laws but – like everyone else – so far knows nothing about the contents of this new legislation. He opens up by saying it is inappropriate to explain what the phrase ‘subversion of state power’ means. To add further clarity, he tells us ‘the law should be kept confidential before it is made public’. (In other words, if you need it spelled out to you, it will be non-public until it is no longer confidential. You’re welcome.)
Finally, the mystery Black Dungeons in which NatSec suspects may be held indefinitely (you know – the ones we first heard about yesterday) will possibly be sort of like one that the British used in the 1967 Communist bombing campaign, or kind of similar to what they do in Singapore. So nothing to worry about there!
The best place to locate a Black Dungeon is over at the airport. There must be some spare rooms next to the city’s underground gold-bullion storage facility. Also, you can easily transfer them over to the Mainland for some traditional finger-nail pulling, or with the especially serious cases, a week or two with no internet access.
Re the judge list, maybe the naughty people could select their judge as in a raffle. You could even televise the thing. Apart from adding a bit of amusement, that would keep on their toes those with naughtyish tendencies.
Do our compatriots from across the border realize that they will no longer be beyond the reach of the Security Bureau while in Hong Kong? That their assets, including luxury apartments and corrupt money-bank accounts, can be seized at any time? That their mistresses can be repatriated too? That foreign passports will not protect them anymore?
If I were them I would liquidate my assets and get on that plane to the US right now, like, yesterday.
CENO and Boss Cop are going to be pushed to justify how the new police unit is going to be fully prepared to go into action as soon as the NIL is promugated when nobody will know what’s in the law until after it comes into force.
Because that’s where the Special Branch kept the animals, The Victoria Road Detention Centre was known as the zoo.
You are going to need to do a live blog, because the amount of back and forth, and self-contradicting statements both the National Party Congress reps and the Hong Kong government officials are making are causing my brain to swim. Lam is constantly rearranging her perspective on this. How can this be at all calming? Nobody will ever know what the law means or how it is to be used until the civil code authorities who are dare I say completely biased determine how it is to be used. They will then construct a reason for using it and then instruct the government to use it that way. I hope you all remember that over a year ago I said that the single most important thing that would come out of all of this tension was that China’s government would just completely override the legal system in Hong Kong, making it basically the mainland and flip it all if you have a complaint. They do not care what world opinion means in this regard. Of course, the benefit of this type of myopia and fascism is that it sets alight the fuse that causes so much anger and so much spoiling of the system that it falls in on itself. There has not been a single authoritarian state except for the supremely isolated North Korea that has not imploded because of overreach and collision with reality in the world. We pray.
IF you have at least one parent who has at least a smidgeon of Chinese blood in their veins AND you were born in, live in or visit the PRC, Hong Kong, Macau AND Taiwan, the PRC holds you to be a Chinese National REGARDLESS of any other nationality you may have:
https://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/services/roa/nationality.html
However, you can go through the procedure above to renounce your Chinese Nationality and get a new ***-free ID card and a certificate which you can wave with your foreign passport in Immigration Departure if they ever try to stop you leaving the new HKSAR Utopia for pastures new.
We have our clearest indications yet that Beijing is looking to disqualify the entire pan-democratic camp by having the Secretary for Constitutional Affairs announce that opposition to the NatSec law is, in and of itself, a NatSec offence worthy of disqualification from office.
It feels like Beijing will not rest until it destroys Hong Kong or turns it into just another Chinese city. Which is the same thing really.
And while we’ve long suspected this, the process really is being accelerated in the time of the Wuhan coronavirus. Hell, it seems like Beijing’s intent on passing that piece of “national security legislation” in less time than it took for the latest Five Guys branch in Hong Kong (over in Fortress Hill) to be readied to begin operations!
***-Free
If the Immigration Dept doesn’t want to let you out, I don’t think it will matter two stuffs what passport/paperwork you are waving, particularly now Them Up North are formally in charge.
So the CCP reckon that Hong Kong can survive as a credible international convertible-currency financial centre despite the National Security Law and the other encroachments they have in mind.
Is there anyone here who knows whether they are right or not?