Dogs on a lead. This is how Chow Hang-tung, a lawyer and leading figure in the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement, described in a message posted the day before yesterday on her Patreon account the way in which the Hong Kong authorities transport detainees, particularly political prisoners such as herself. As widely anticipated, yesterday the Hong Kong High Court found 41-year-old Chow and Lee Cheuk-yan guilty. For years, they had been the organisers of the annual vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and the leaders of the now-dissolved Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, on charges of incitement to subversion under the national security law imposed by Beijing in July 2020. Detained since September 2021, Chow and Lee now face up to ten years’ imprisonment, and the sentencing hearing is scheduled for next Friday.
Beijing accuses both of them of having incited citizens to overthrow the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party through the historic call to ‘put an end to one-party rule’, one of the group’s founding principles since 1989. And the judges, whilst acknowledging that the activists had never specified any concrete methods or timelines for achieving that objective, and that the Alliance had never resorted to or called for violence, they nevertheless deemed that the dissemination of that slogan after the National Security Law came into force was sufficient grounds for a pre-trial detention – a punishment of isolation and silence – because by spreading it they had in some way contributed “to undermining citizens’ trust in the Party leadership”. This is the absurdity of the rule of law not only in Hong Kong, but throughout the People’s Republic of China. And in particular, Chow – a scientist, lawyer and activist who chose to defend herself throughout the proceedings – speaks of the ‘Russification’ of China and the war being waged against anyone deemed a political enemy. Dogs on a leash, indeed. Since the start of the trial, the authorities have changed “the method of restraint. It is no longer just a simple pair of handcuffs: they now use a whole system comprising handcuffs, leg irons, waist chains and ankle chains”, she writes. The system – consisting of handcuffs covered in hard plastic and without the usual ability to rotate the wrist – prevents the natural movement of the arms, forcing the wearer to twist their torso and shoulders to prevent the edges from cutting into the skin, leaving marks that do not fade even after a full day in court. And Chow writes that it is not visible violence that causes the most harm, but rather the way in which certain devices force the body to inflict pain upon itself, ‘choosing’ which part to make suffer from time to time. Sophisticated torture, “just like mature totalitarianism”, she writes, “avoids visible and explicitly cruel acts of violence. Its strength lies in exploiting and creating internal conflicts amongst people, fuelling constant mutual surveillance, control and denunciation. In this way, the perpetrators’ responsibility is diffused”. The People’s Republic of China has, in the space of six years, succeeded in silencing an entire city – the only one still fighting for democracy and against authoritarianism. Whilst the Western world looks the other way, Chow, Lee Cheuk-yan and Jimmy Lai, the founder of Apple Daily, remain in prison like dogs on a lead, simply for having spoken to the Chinese people about freedom.
