US still supports Hong Kong, should open door to its people: Bolton
Former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton told an FCC webinar that Hong Kong still enjoys broad support in the United States even as the city’s freedoms are being eroded, and that the Trump administration should follow the lead of other Western countries and open the doors to Hongkongers wishing to leave, writes Keith Richburg.
Former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton appears in an FCC webinar on July 15, 2020.
Bolton spoke the day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending Hong Kong’s preferential trade treatment, and a sanctions bill aimed at individuals and banks, leading some analysts to suggest Washington and Beijing were headed for a “decoupling” of their relationship if not a new Cold War.
Bolton said decoupling is “not only possible, but is happening,” although he said the likelihood of a military conflict remained remote.
Calling the new China-imposed national security law “deplorable,” Bolton said: “It must be very discouraging for the people in Hong Kong. They fought so long. They thought they had another 25-plus years before this.”
“Don’t think that anybody’s giving up on you,” Bolton added: “I favour greatly immigration and I think what Britain, Canada and others have done in terms of potential political asylum for Hong Kong is something the United States should do, too, so I favour more immigration.”
Bolton, who left the Trump administration in September 2019, described its China policy as “incoherent” and “utterly without strategy”.
While Trump understood the Hong Kong protests of 2019 to be “significant in size,” he was “resolute in not wanting to do anything about it or to get involved in it”, fearing it might disrupt prospects for a trade deal.
The July 15 discussion between Bolton and FCC board of governors member Keith Richburg focused largely on U.S. relations, which have become increasingly strained over trade, territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and the coronavirus pandemic.
Bolton also touched on Republican Party politics, saying he would not vote for either Trump or former vice-president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in November, instead choosing to write in a conservative candidate. Bolton said he wants to spend time after the election working to rebuild the Republican Party for the post-Trump era.
Hong Kong’s businesses ‘must seize COVID-19 opportunities’
Hong Kong’s retailers must seize the opportunities brought about by COVID-19, according to two of the city’s best known business people.
Syed Asim Hussain, co-founder of Black Sheep Restaurants; and Goods of Desire founder, Douglas Young, both agreed the so-called new normal was here to stay as the city played a “cat-and-mouse game” with the lifting and reimposing of restrictions to combat the coronavirus.
The two were speaking alongside Asia economist Alicia García Herrero during a panel discussion on July 14 – the day before tighter social restrictions come into force – exploring how the city’s economy could survive without tourism dollars in the wake of the Hong Kong protests and COVID-19.
Hussain, who in 2018 became the world’s youngest restaurateur to hold two Michelin stars, predicted that by this autumn one in three restaurants in the city will have gone out of business. Young conceded that the Hong Kong protests had hit his lifestyle retail business hard, but that the face mask “is going to be my company’s saviour” since his outlets began selling fashionable and washable masks.
The outlook isn’t all bleak, however. Herrero said the good news for retailers was that rents would decrease in the city as the vacancy rate increased due to businesses closing down or moving to cheaper premises.
You can watch the event here
Maria Ressa and Caoilfhionn Gallagher express ‘shock’ at Hong Kong national security law
Rappler CEO Maria Ressa and international human rights lawyer, Caoilfhionn Gallagher, have expressed shock at new national security legislation imposed on Hong Kong.
FCC First Vice President, Eric Wishart, interviews Maria Ressa and Caoilfhionn Gallagher on July 9.
Joining an FCC webinar on her fight against her recent conviction in the Philippines on cyber libel charges, Ressa was unequivocal when asked what was her reaction to the introduction of the law: “Shock”.
“When we were looking at the protests and this surge for press freedom… I understood why and we all were trying to understand, why is that not happening here? What’s the difference?
“What we’re seeing is really a geopolitical power shift and COVID-19 is helping that. But this is also where I feel Hong Kong is punching above its weight, what you guys do will impact the rest of us. And the Philippines is also punching above its weight in terms of a geopolitical power balance because President Duterte’s shift from the US to China and Russia. That is shifting the power balance in the South China Sea.”
Gallagher, a renowned lawyer who leads Ressa’s international defence team alongside Amal Clooney, expressed “shock and concern”. She was also deeply concerned by Carrie Lam’s July 7 comments in which the Hong Kong Chief Executive said she would give guarantees about press freedom to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club and journalists if they also give “a 100% guarantee that they will not commit any offences under this piece of national legislation”.
“That is a promise that’s not worth the paper it’s not written on, if I can put it that way, when you then look at the law, which is breathtakingly broad. I read with some horror the description of the crime of subversion, undermining the power and authority of central government. So the crimes themselves are exceptionally broad.”
She added: “I’m very concerned by the provisions relating to regulation and surveillance. The part that someone suspected of breaking this breathtakingly broad law can be wiretapped and put under surveillance is of serious concern to journalists.”
On her legal fight against her June conviction and sentence of six years in prison, Ressa said she was “geared up for battle”.
The executive editor of news website Rappler.com was arrested last year over an allegedly defamatory article published in 2012 which linked a businessman to trafficking and drug smuggling. She denied charges of cyber libel, calling them “baseless”. The move came several months after a warrant was issued for her arrest on seven charges of tax fraud — a case she called “politically motivated”. Rappler has been a frequent critic of President Rodrigo Duterte and his administration.
On June 29, Ressa and co-defendant Reynaldo Santos Jr filed a motion for partial reconsideration, appealing to Manila Judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa to reconsider her decision.
The FCC issued a statement deploring the conviction, saying it set a precedent and could have a “chilling effect on the press in the Philippines and across the region”.
Club president Jodi Schneider said: “Press freedom, already endangered in the Philippines, is now further undermined with this high-profile verdict.”
The national security law: Hong Kong journalists should be more serious about protecting sources and information
Journalists in Hong Kong must be a lot more serious about protecting their sources and data if they are to navigate the new national security law.
That was the opinion of three panelists discussing the impact of the new legislation on press freedom in the city. The event on July 7 came a week after China’s top legislature enacted the law which criminalises any act of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign or external forces.
Keith Richburg, director of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong and a former Washington Post Beijing bureau chief, said he potentially foresees visa restrictions for journalists in Hong Kong who cross the so-called ‘red line’ in their reporting. However, he added that the details of the ‘red line’ have been deliberately vague to allow authorities to be flexible in how the legislation is interpreted.
The key for journalists, Richburg said, was “to figure out how to operate within the law and where the red lines are – coming as close as you can without crossing them”.
Joining Richburg on the panel was Sharron Fast, a legal expert from the Journalism and Media Studies Centre, and author Antony Dapiran. Fast observed that the law is difficult to interpret as two streams had been created – authority, and the Hong Kong judiciary. She highlighted some of the articles that could threaten press freedom in the city, such as Article 41, “one of themany provisions that waters down the right of a fair trial”, she said. No media is permitted in the courts where the offence is deemed to be state secret, yet there is no definition of state secret.
Dapiran, also a corporate lawyer, raised the issue of protection of information and data in relation to the city’s police being given new powers to search without a warrant obtained through the courts. He advised journalists to be very vigilant about the way they store information and data.
You can watch the entire event here
So much at stake if Rappler’s Maria Ressa is jailed, says leading press freedom advocate
FCC First Vice President, Eric Wishart, interviews Joel Simon and Amelia Brace.
Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told an FCC webinar that the full force of the press freedom movement was being deployed to protect Ressa, who was sentenced to six years in prison by a Philippines court on June 15 for cyber libel. Ressa and Rappler’s reporting has been critical of President Rodrigo Duterte’s government.
Simon, a friend of Ressa, said her conviction would have far-reaching consequences and that it was crucial to prevent her being jailed.
“We have to win because if we do not win, if we cannot keep Maria Ressa out of prison, then every tyrant and every repressive government will feel that they can act against journalists without consequence. So much is at stake. It’s an absolute Waterloo moment for the press freedom movement,” he said.
Joining Simon on the June 18 webinar on the growing threats to journalists during the recent Black Lives Matter protests in the United States was Australian journalist Amelia Brace. The US correspondent for Australia’s Seven Network was attacked along with her TV crew by police just yards from the White House as the area was cleared to make way for a presidential photo opportunity. Footage shows how cameraman Tim Myers was injured when a police officer in riot gear hit him with a shield before punching the camera. Brace was struck several times across the back with a baton and hit by pepper balls ahead of President Donald Trump’s walk from the White House to nearby St. John’s Church.
The video of the attack has been watched on the network’s video channel more than 8 million times. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison described the incident as ‘troubling’ and called for an investigation.
“It was a terrifying moment and quite a violent moment as a journalist,” Brace admitted. “The heavy-handed approach by police was completely disproportionate.”
Simon added that the CPJ’s U.S. Press Freedom Tracker had documented more than 400 attacks on journalists by police in the United States since the protests began. He said he believed that the militarisation of the police force was the dynamic that accounted for the significant rise in attacks on credentialized reporters covering the nationwide demonstrations.
“This is how the police in the United States are trained,” he said.
Watch the webinar
Freelance journalist Laurel Chor recognised for Hong Kong protests coverage
Laurel Chor, a freelancer and FCC member, has been given an honourable mention in the International Women’s Media Foundation’s (IWMF) annual Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award for her coverage of the Hong Kong protests and showing the region’s struggle for democracy, freedom and human rights.
Laurel Chor.
Named after German AP photojournalist Anja Niedringhaus, who was killed in 2014, the award recognises gripping, nuanced photojournalism that inspires action. This year’s awardee was Masrat Zahra (Kashmir), and an additional honourable mention was awarded to Nahira Montcourt (Puerto Rico).
Chor is an award-winning freelance photojournalist from Hong Kong. In 2019, she worked with the New York Times, National Geographic, Getty, AFP, Reuters, EPA, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, NBC News, the Telegraph, the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong Free Press, the New Humanitarian, the Spectator, the Nikkei Asian Review, the Guardian, the Washington Post and Quartz.
Currently, Chor is covering the Hong Kong protests. Previously, she was the Asia reporter and producer for VICE News Tonight on HBO, covering news, culture and politics across the region: from the Rohingya refugee crisis to the Chinese social credit system, from the assassination of Kim Jong Un’s half-brother to Chinese “boy” bands and from the earthquake in Palu, Indonesia to the war on drugs in Bangladesh.
Prior to that, Chor was the managing editor for Coconuts Hong Kong. In 2013, Jane Goodall appointed her to be the ambassador for the Jane Goodall Institute in Hong Kong.
Commenting on Chor’s portfolio, the jury noted that her portfolio demonstrated, “unique framing, complex commentary on community and great skill with the sequencing of the narrative.”
British policing expert who resigned from IPCC probe into Hong Kong protests wouldn’t ‘feel safe’ returning to city
A British expert in protest policing who withdrew from an international panel appointed by Hong Kong’s police complaints body to investigate the policing of last year’s protests has said he would not feel safe returning to the city.
Professor Clifford Stott during the June 11 FCC webinar on protest policing. Photo: FCC
Professor Clifford Stott of Keele University told an FCC webinar that he and other panel members resigned because they were “manipulated and put in an awkward position” as they worked to advise the Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC) on its report into the 2019 anti-government unrest. When the IPCC finally published its report in May 2020, which cleared the force of misconduct, Prof Stott said it was missing key pieces of data. This, he said, called into question the IPCC’s powers, capacity and independent investigative capability. He is soon to release his own paper on his findings.
“We were put in a difficult position. We were in the end manipulated and put in an awkward position,” Prof Stott said, adding: “There is no way I could have stood by that report.”
When asked if he thought he would be allowed to visit Hong Kong in the future, Prof Stott said: “I would love to come back, of course I would, but I don’t think I’d feel safe.”
While Prof Stott was reluctant to expand on his claim of manipulation, he revealed that information collected by the panel from protesters and legal professionals had not been included in the final report. They included accounts of what had happened to protesters after they were arrested and their lack of access to legal representation.
“We heard shocking information about what had happened… on August 11 at the detention centre in particular. That data is not in the IPCC report,” he said.
Prof Stott is an expert in protest policing whose research has informed policy and practice for a range of government and police organisations in the U.K., including the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers, among others. He spoke about the protests currently sweeping the United States and Britain in the wake of the death of American George Floyd at the hands of a police officer, commenting that the movement is part of a pattern developing globally in response to poor social conditions.
Prof Stott said COVID-19 was “the great amplifier of inequality” as it highlighted social shortfalls. He added that calls for the defunding of the police were in fact calls for funds to be diverted into social care such as youth and mental health services to solve the problems at source.
“The state often ends up funding the police to mop up problems that could have been solved by investing in other areas,” he said.
Watch the video
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club Awards Clare Hollingworth Fellowships
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club Awards Clare Hollingworth Fellowships
FELLOWS
Jennifer Creery Jennifer Creery is a Managing Editor and reporter with the Hong Kong Free Press. She has previously interned at Al Jazeera,
the Press Association and the Independent.
Tiffany Liang Tiffany Liang is a freelance reporter with the Washington Post.
She was previously a junior reporter at HK01 and a trainee at RTHK Putonghua channel, Guangdong Broadcast
Television and the Southern Metropolis Daily.
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club is pleased to announce that it has chosen Jennifer Creery and Tiffany Liang as recipients of the second annual Clare Hollingworth Fellowship, named in honor of the preeminent and path-breaking journalist.
The panel of judges noted the winners offer clear potential as future leaders both within the FCC and the wider Hong Kong journalism community.
“We had a competitive pool of applicants and the two winners were especially impressive in their journalistic talent and their potential,” said Jodi Schneider, president of the FCC. “We are heartened by the interest in journalism in Hong Kong and in the FCC as a center for the press here. It gives us great hope for the future of our profession.”
The Fellowship is focused on early-career journalists and current journalism school students in Hong Kong.
The open competition drew significant interest from a cross spectrum of applicants. The adjudicators noted the high standard of applicants and encouraged all to apply again next year.
Chris Patten: Hong Kong protesters shouldn’t lose heart
Lord Chris Patten, Hong Kong’s last governor, urged the city’s protesters not to lose heart but to continue their fight with dignity.
Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong, talks during an FCC webinar on May 20, 2020.
The former chairman of Britain’s Conservative Party was speaking during an FCC webinar on the future of Hong Kong where he answered a wide variety of questions from members. On the question of the future of Hong Kong’s protest movement, Patten said: “They shouldn’t lose heart. They shouldn’t lose their sense of dignity and decency and moderation.”
Patten took the guest seat in the webinar the week after a report from the Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC) cleared its force of misconduct during last year’s anti-government protests.
Patten said the report “divides the community even more” and described it as “a blow to the hopes we all had to return to normality”.
“And normality is a situation in which people can express their views if they choose to do so and not be run off the streets,” he added
On the recent arrests of leading pro-democracy figures on charges of involvement in unlawful assemblies, Patten described the move as “an attempt to intimidate the rest of Hong Kong”.
On the COVID-19 outbreak, Patten praised Hong Kong and Taiwan for their response to the epidemic, saying that Hong Kong “dealt with it brilliantly”. He added that freedom of the press in the city had given residents the information they needed to act quickly. Patten was critical of the Chinese government for quashing the voices of whistleblower doctors in the early stages of the epidemic, but added that the Chinese people “behaved heroically” in their response to the crisis.
Following the event, Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong issued a statement in which it accused Patten of “distorting the one country, two systems principle” and tarnishing China’s international image.
LIAISON OFFICE IN HONG KONG
One Country, two systems means what it says. It does mean that Hong Kong has a high degree of autonomy and that’s one reason why people have continued to invest in Hong Kong. It’s one reason why it’s responsible for, I guess, two thirds, maybe more, of mediated direct investment in and out of mainland China. So I don’t think one should spend too much time questioning whether what was done by the joint liaison office and the Hong Kong Macau affairs office was in breach of the joint declaration – of course it was. It’s a breach of the promises to Hong Kong people about local autonomy.
PRO-DEMOCRACY ARRESTS
The arrest of 15 well-known democratic leaders for doing what I think in one case 1.7 million people or more had done. Nobody accuses them of violence but they took part in demonstrations which as I say were attended by 1.7 million people. Now I read what the UN Human Rights observer has said about that and I totally agree with it. It’s pretty outrageousand we all know what it’s an attempt to do. It’s an attempt to intimidate the rest of Hong Kong. The idea that President Xi Jinping should be terrified of Margaret Ng is really pretty incredible.
LEGCO
Even in the last few years when people have disagreed strongly about things, there’s been a general recognition, as I understand it, that the chairmanships and deputy chairmanships of the committee would be shared out across the chamber, and I think it’s a thoroughly bad thing that that has gone.
IPCC REPORT
Back in June last year, I said that one way of ending the demonstrations and bringing calm back to the city would be to establish an independent inquiry transparent under judicial powers to look at what had happened. And I think with much more legal argument behind it, Andrew Lee, the former chief justice, argued for the same without making any political points about it. Now it just happens to be a subject about which I know a bit because after the Good Friday agreement in Northern I Ireland I was tasked to chair the committee which reorganised policing. It was a Labour government that appointed me, I came from the Conservative Party. I had a group of international experts, I had a group from both sides of the Catholic and Protestant communities and we did it transparently and openly and we produced a report which the whole community could accept. We had I think 20…30…40 public meetings with huge crowds at them and it turned into a sort of reconciliation commission. That’s the point of these things. To finish up with an IPCC report which just divides the community even more really is a blow to the hopes we all had of a return to normality in Hong Kong. And normality is a situation in which people can express their views if they choose to do so and not be run off the streets.
ONE COUNTRY TWO SYSTEMS
I think there’s been a significant change in China – in Beijing – since Xi Jinping became president or dictator for life complete with a personality cult which is extraordinary. Ten to 12 years after 1997 things went pretty well, not perfectly. The promises of giving Hong Kong greater accountability, more opportunities for developing democratic institutions – a promise which was explicitly made before 1997 and afterwards both by Liu Ping, the director then of the Hong Kong Macau affairs office, and by the Foreign Ministry in Beijing – those promises were rowed back on. But by and large Hong Kong was allowed to get on with its own life and people’s determination to have the Rule of Law, to have all the freedoms you associate with Hong Kong’s success. By and large that wasn’t interfered with but just as Xi Jinping came in and dissidents were rounded up, they were tougher on human rights. I think it’s also true that Xi Jinping saw that liberal democracy, as he would define it, as an existential threat to what he wanted to do. There was an instruction to government and party officials sent out in 2013 which said that all these things like teaching history openly, like the Rule of Law, like giving people greater accountability, like developing civil society… all these things are a threat to the Communist Party so we must attack them. And it became public because a very brave woman in her 70s called Gao Yu leaked this, and it’s all there, including the stuff about patriotic education. so I think that the sad point is that in the last few years, Xi Jinping and his court have regarded Hong Kong and Hong Kong’s freedoms as an existential problem for them because Hong Kong represents so much of what they dislike.
Don’t let COVID-19 infect democracy, warns top journalist
We must not allow coronavirus to infect democracy, warned the founder of a Philippines news website the day after the country’s biggest broadcaster was forced off air by President Duterte.
Maria Ressa, founder and CEO of Rappler.com, was speaking as part of an FCC panel exploring the stifling of press freedom in some regions under the guise of the fight against COVID-19. ABS-CBN, which has been critical of Duterte in the past, was shut down on May 5 by the country’s media regulator. Ressa headed the broadcaster’s news division between 2004 and 2010.
“We have to make sure that we don’t let the virus infect democracy, and journalism is the first line of defence to shine the light,” said Ressa during the Zoom broadcast.
Pakistani journalist and author Mohammed Hanif, and Turkey-based video journalist Helene Franchineau, both gave examples of journalists who had been jailed since the COVID-19 outbreak began in their respective countries. And with many courts closed, the likelihood of justice was small. In Pakistan, President Arif Alvi has appointed a media adviser which Hanif said he feared would lead to a renewed war on the media in the country.
Franchineau said Turkish journalists who had been critical of the government’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis were being targeted by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Among them, Fox TV Turkey news anchor Fatih Portakal, who faces imprisonment for a social media post critical of the government’s COVID-19 response.
Former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton appears in an FCC webinar on July 15, 2020.
