Human Rights in Hong Kong

John Nicolson Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP) [V]]

What we are seeing in Hong Kong is a two-pronged assault on truth. First, China attacks the source of truth—reporting—by threatening and expelling journalists who expose the extent of China’s authoritarian behaviour. Secondly, China creates an Orwellian alternative narrative in which those who tell the truth are the liars, and those who commit violent acts of repression are the liberators.

China’s leaders hate journalism. At the end of March, the BBC’s China correspondent was driven out of Hong Kong. Plain-clothes goons followed him and his family to the airport. This was not an isolated case. Most independent foreign correspondents have now been expelled, as Beijing proceeds to eliminate the last vestiges of Hong Kong’s freedom. With this in mind, it is hardly surprising to see China being ranked by the World Press Freedom Index as one of the worst countries in the world for media freedoms; it is ranked a dismal 177th.

Once upon a time, some thought that Hong Kong could be a beacon for China, spreading its values to the mainland. Instead, the opposite has happened. Under its current leader, China has become ever more controlling and hostile to the truth. Hong Kong is merely the latest victim of a malign system that has trampled on press freedoms, democracy, cultural and religious minorities, and once independent nations, as the downtrodden and oppressed people of Tibet, the Uyghurs and many others can testify.

Journalistic censorship is paired with other despotic trademarks, disinformation being the foremost. In the digital world in which we live, it is not enough for the Chinese leadership to stem information coming from legitimate news outlets; information from normal citizens must also be quashed. China employs what is sometimes called the 50 cent army, so-called because of their meagre daily pay. Thought to number millions, these Communist party drones track online activity and work to sway public opinion with disinformation both inside China and outwith. Bots counter unfavourable reports and conversations about the Chinese regime.

It is a tactic deployed by the Kremlin, too, and it is spreading across the globe. During the recent onslaught against Gaza by the Israelis, there were mounting reports of another onslaught—the mass reporting by pro-Israeli groups of Palestinian posts from Gaza. This is a new world in which social media is weaponised by the powerful.

What can we do when faced with this bleak descent into untruth? We must champion journalism; we must speak up when we are told that there are “alternative facts”; we must steel the resolve of social media companies when they crumble under the weight of totalitarian pressure and their own avarice; we must speak the names of those who are bullied, arrested and imprisoned; we must honour the memory of those brave young people crushed by the Chinese regime in Tiananmen Square; we must assert the rights of the Uyghurs, and call out their detention and torture; we must champion the right of Tibet to self-determination; and we must never accept Hong Kong’s slide into the grim and oppressive reality faced by so many in mainland China, because we promised its people better.