Mark L. Clifford: Hong Kong Kills the Rule of Law

By putting a bounty on the heads of democracy activists, Chief Executive John Lee has effectively murdered the rule of law.

By Mark L. Clifford

Hong Kong’s retreat from freedom has turned into a rout. The city’s Chief Executive John Lee announced bounties on the heads of eight Hong Kong democracy activists living abroad, pledging more than $1 million for their arrests. Lee, the territory’s top official, did not hesitate to pronounce the eight guilty. He warned that people should stay away from these wanted eight, calling them “street rats.”

I know these people. I can attest that in any free and open society they would be celebrated for their willingness to devote time and energy to making their city a better place. Among them are lawyers, former legislators, a businessman, a student activist, and a unionist.

The Bounty Eight are being threatened because John Lee and his Chinese Communist Party masters fear their embrace of freedom. They hate the fact that people like Dennis Kwok, a lawyer and former legislator who now has affiliations with elite American institutions including Harvard and Georgetown, wants to hold China accountable for its promises to the people of Hong Kong. They detest Anna Kwok, a former student activist who now heads the Washington, D.C.-based Hong Kong Democracy Council, for speaking truth to the U.S. Congress about what’s really happening in Hong Kong.

These eight people—and their counterparts who are being tried in Hong Kong under a vague and sweeping National Security Law—are guilty only of upholding the cause of freedom. They wanted to hold China to the pledges it made when it took over the once-great city from Britain in 1997.  

At the time of the handover, China proclaimed that, after a century-and-a-half of colonialism, Hong Kong had been liberated: “Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong.” In a unique political formulation, China promised that under a “one country, two systems” arrangement, Hong Kong could continue to keep its freedoms for at least the next 50 years. Further, China promised that Hong Kong could move toward a fully democratic local government, something that Britain had not instituted during the colonial period.

Read TFP’s February 2022 conversation with Mark L. Clifford: The Tragedy of Hong Kong, and Why It Could Be Coming to a Geopolitical Theater Near You.

Instead, a quarter-century later, an assertive China treats Hong Kong as if it were a restive border region that must be put down. What’s happening in Hong Kong mirrors the sort of ruthless crackdown the Tibetans have endured for more than six decades. Free speech has been criminalized. The most important pro-democracy newspaper in the city, Apple Daily, was shuttered two years ago when John Lee froze its bank accounts (I sat on the board of directors of the parent company). The newspaper’s founder and majority shareholder, Jimmy Lai, has been jailed more than 900 days. Six other colleagues have been held for two years awaiting trial.

Each of the Bounty Eight had good reason to leave the territory. Otherwise, they too would be locked up in a Hong Kong prison.

Apple Daily founder and democracy activist Jimmy Lai meets with Vice President Mike Pence in the White House, July 8, 2019, before his arrest in 2020 by Hong Kong police on charges of violating the territory's draconian national security law.

The communist fatwa that John Lee has issued puts the eight activists at heightened risk abroad. At least one of them has been attacked previously. By placing a bounty on their heads and referring to them as “rats,” John Lee has raised the stakes, including the possibility that there could be further attacks by self-styled nationalist vigilantes acting out of a misguided sense of patriotism.

Issuing bounties implies that these individuals are little better than terrorists. This bullying behavior betrays the thuggishness with which Hong Kong and Chinese communist authorities have chosen to treat even people who had chosen to work within the system. The fact that the chief executive has judged the eight activists guilty even before formal charges have been made, let alone a trial, makes a mockery of Hong Kong’s pretensions to uphold the rule of law.

John Lee hopes to be invited to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in San Francisco this November. Lee has been sanctioned by the United States for his role in human-rights abuses such as the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 2019 and the implementation of the National Security Law in 2020. Lee’s attendance at APEC would require a waiver from the U.S. State Department, as sanctions currently prohibit with him from entering the United States. Such a waiver would make a mockery of the U.S. sanctions regime. The State Department should make it clear that a waiver is not forthcoming. The U.S. should ensure that Hong Kong will pay a price for continuing to trample on the freedoms of Hong Kong, a city that previously ranked as one of Asia’s most open.

Mark L. Clifford is the president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation and the author of Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World: What China’s Crackdown Reveals About Its Plans to End Freedom Everywhere. Read TFP’s February 2022 conversation with Clifford here: The Tragedy of Hong Kong, and Why It Could Be Coming to a Geopolitical Theater Near You.