 This is Think Tech Hawaii, more specifically, this is Global Connections, I'm Jay Fiedel, the handsome young man is Michael Davis, and he joins us from New York. Am I right? Yeah. So, Michael, you know, three things have happened with respect to civil liberties in Hong Kong in the recent past. The first is that a fellow named John Lee was elected in a what looked like a fake election as I guess he succeeds the chief executive of Hong Kong, and he's a plant. And then we had the cancellation of the human rights press awards. I find that interesting. I want to talk to you about that. And finally, the humanitarian relief fund trustees and five pro-democracy leaders in Hong Kong, and we have their names, were arrested under the national security law for, and this is my favorite part. For allegedly colliding, colluding, colluding with foreign forces. Now that's all really interesting, and it all happened in a fairly short, expansive time. What is going on these days in Hong Kong and civil liberties? Well, really, it's a tragic story. The government pretends that, well, business as usual. We're just getting a few bad apples here and so on. When they passed the national security law, as you know, we've talked about this before in mid-2020. And they act like, well, it's not going to, you know, change Hong Kong dramatically, but it has. And it's aggressively enforced. One wonders why so aggressively? I mean, you can pick a few bad apples as it were, and everyone will get the message. But I kind of think that Beijing is calling the shots under this national security law. Beijing sets up in really contrary to what it seems to say in the basic law of Hong Kong, which was passed many years ago, that the mainland departments would not interfere in Hong Kong. Well, they set up an entire mainland department called the Office for Safeguarding National Security. And that staffed, it's got a huge building in Hong Kong, staff of, I don't know how many people, lots of people. And then they set up special units of the police just to focus on enforcing national security. And of course, most of us would think there was really, there was some public order issues, but not really anybody in a position to threaten the national security of China. But in any case, that's how they branded all opposition as a national security threat. And they've, one of the things that strikes me, especially in looking at the long list of people being arrested this past week, a 90 year old Cardinal, Catholic Cardinal, is that there's a bit of score satellite going on here. They're going after some of their older enemies, their older critics, people who have tried for years and pushed and conjoaled them to carry out their obligations under that basic law, which was a kind of liberal constitutional order. That was the characteristic that Hong Kong always had. And so these people have seen Beijing slowly kind of eroding those commitments and interfering more and more and they've been opposing it over the years. And it all, all in accordance with law, they, the protests that were had were nonviolent in all of these past years and so on, and largely ignored by Beijing. So it seems that. And the trustees who were arrested were a very prestigious group. Oh, yeah. Humanitarian trust that existed for a long time, senior leaders of the community, who were well respected in every corner. That really makes it all the worst. Absolutely. One of them was a former Bishop of Hong Kong, the highest Catholic official in Hong Kong for several years. One is a very prominent barrister, a very old friend of mine, Margaret, the Bishop is Cardinal Joseph Zen. There's a singer who basically sings songs about Hong Kong and kind of kind of an activist in a way for the protests that were occurring. And so you got a singer, a cleric, a lawyer, a professor. And these people ran a fund to provide legal aid services and some humanitarian help to protesters over 10,000 protesters were arrested. So this is basically the most fundamental value in Hong Kong has always been the rule of law. And at the heart of the rule of law is the right to provide a criminal defense. But now this fund, first it was attacked about nearly a year ago and forced to disband. Because, you know, when Beijing starts attacking you, they either in the in the probe aging press, and then the officials start saying we're investigating the fund. Well, then the message is clear, you better wind it up and stop. And now they, they, what happened was the professor, one of the guys was going to go take up a job in Italy. So he went to the airport and then immediately they went and arrested all of them, I guess they were fearful that they would leave Hong Kong and apparently they have plans to to prosecute them. So this, I mean they'd all been arrested taken in once before but released. But it's this time they're arrested with these collusion charges. So, so this is kind of what's happening and and this fund, I don't think posed a threat to anyone. It simply provided the kind of services that we all respect. And so what seems to be the cases all, you know, during the 2019 protest, when a few youngsters got out of hand and we're throwing rocks and stuff. The senior members of the pro democracy camp, never use violence ever, and we're publicly speaking out against using any violence. So why are they suddenly being taken up in all of this national security net and I guess because they're settling scores they're going after people who have criticized the China's policies in Hong Kong in the past. And you know that does occur. But as I mentioned before the show I have a theory about a second purpose in all of this, and it's to send a message to everyone, them and everyone else. And my, my favorite parts why I said my favorite part is for those who were arrested for colluding with foreign forces. And that means talking to people outside the country. And I recall there is a provision in the national security law, which makes it a crime to do that. You can't even talk about so essentially this is a war against against the press against freedom of speech, a war against information. It's an attempt to control all the information. All right. So that's, that's what it's come out to be. And it seems to go way beyond any threat to national security. There was a public order problem in the 2019 protest because of the police actually what happened was on the streets, the police were being very aggressive. And I would assume, you know, again, all you do is guess because, because this is all opaque, but they were being very aggressive and people were singing on the evening news and everybody got angry because the police tactics were way out of line for many things Hong Kong and ever experienced. And so people are shown. Well, yeah, not many, but any case there were people being beaten up a lot. I did some interviews in late 2019, because we did a report on Hong Kong. And when I spoke to defense lawyers they mentioned that almost all their clients had some injuries that I told them how many what percent they were guessing like 60 70% so people were getting beat up when they're arrested had their heads rammed into the pavement and then when they're in custody as well. So, so this is that the sort of youngster violence that the government likes to showcase was actually a small minority. Two million people marched on the street during the 2019 protest without any violence. And so a few hothead youngsters watching what the police were doing. We're sort of mimicking it in their own behavior by throwing rocks and bricks and things, but to use that as an excuse to basically take away all civil liberties in Hong Kong, hardly seem to justify to think that the protesters must be very intimidating for anyone. You know, and it reminds me your description of the street scene reminds me of some of the early protests in Moscow to to Moscow and Putin's invasion of Ukraine. I think you could compare, you know, the deep the degrading of civil liberties in Hong Kong as against the degrading of civil liberties in Russia right now. Well, I think it's a similar sort of a playbook at least that you you basically grab off the streets anyone who offers opposition, and then you try to control information. And in the case of Russia and the case of mainland China. They have complete control over the media. So we know as is widely reported that Russian people are hearing some Putin version of what's going on in Ukraine. Although some reports today suggest that some people were starting to push back against that in the media business but nonetheless that's kind of what people are spoon fed and then when that's done they sort of support the government because that's all they're hearing. And Hong Kong is a bit of a different story because it still is a society where international media reporting does get in. So while mainland China's hearing one story about Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, Hong Kong people will be hearing a different story. When it comes to the crackdown in Hong Kong. Then I think that the media is there's a serious attempt to cower the local media and any other reporters on the ground, trying to cover events by using these kinds of laws about collusion and and then they even took out of mothballs, a law that had not been used for decades called a sedition law, which was a colonial sedition law. And they're using that because the national security law they passed as provisions in it that says it cannot be applied retroactively to things that took place before its date of promulgation, which was June 30 2020. So how do they go after their their enemies from the past. Well, they have two routes. One is they use that sedition law. And the other is, and I think this is what we're seeing with the humanitarian relief fund is they take your continued behavior that is your continued existence. So that fund existed beyond June 30 2020, and therefore anything and everything it does can be branded as a kind of national security threat, as some form of collusion or collusion and so on. So they found ways to go beyond this retroactive limitation by, by either using evidence from before to punish what comes after, and then also saying well if you continue to exist, then you're still guilty of everything you did. And so now we know that all the prominent opposition organizations, we're talking about labor unions we're not talking about, you know, you know rebels in armed conflict we're talking about just civic groups that are honest and critical of what the government violates human rights. All of those groups have been forced to disband. We know Jimmy lies newspaper which was a so called opposition newspapers forced to disband, and in it's been reported that up to 50 organizations have disbanded. All of this community groups that could resist are shut down. So this is a lot bigger story than just, you know, a few people being arrested because it emanates out the rest is at the heart of it, but there's so much else being done to civic organizations to schools that are required to teach national security. If teachers, they're even a hotline to report your teachers, if you teacher says anything that that somebody in the pro Beijing camp doesn't like. So it really has a chilling effect across the society, and that's a tactic being used. And I think in some ways when when we in the world say, you know, hear about a Beijing model against the liberal Democratic model. There are two models being in competition. I think in some ways Hong Kong is like the, the stare, you know, the foundation sort of example that Beijing envisions as its model, that it's not like the old Soviet Union that would convert countries to But rather than it would hollow out liberal institutions in these sort of quasi Democratic or soft authoritarian societies, and in some sense Hong Kong then is an example of how that works. Yeah, well, where does it take us? I mean, it sounds like a kind of social lobotomy. If you remove all these institutions and all this, you know, creative thinking and social connection in a given society. Where does that study go? It sounds like it's a lobotomy. It sounds like it can never return or not easily. And it sounds like it's going to be a very different place from the place you knew when you live there. Yes, I mean, in some ways Hong Kong was the most vibrant society in many ways in Asia through the many years that that I've spent in Hong Kong, because it had a free press. It still had problems with the press, you know, Beijing would isolate the media not not with advertising funds or blacklist some press. If they were too critical of the regime, certainly the Apple Daily newspaper that Jimmy Lai ran, which has now been wound up, was not getting advertising from mainland companies and probably local companies as well that wanted to please Beijing. So there were ways of intimidation. But at the same time the society was so vibrant that's why two million people would show up on the street. And so it did not suffer fools well. And so if you were too complicit in Beijing's designs, then people would not respect you and we saw that in the late 2020, I think it was late 2020, remember when the district council elections were when the people voted overwhelmingly for the opposition camp as a kind of verdict on what they thought of the demonstrations that were occurring over over 2019. So, so this is I think what what you see and now this has been taken off and Asia has lost dearly for this. And when you take the obvious experience that Hong Kong has had, and you look at it in comparison where in parallel with the Xinjiang and the Uyghurs, you say when they're really setting up a statement that if you want to protest or do anything outside of our instructions, you're in deep trouble. And one of the things that comes out, you know, to me about the Jimmy Lai and the Apple news connection is that they're not only saying that you have to close down your operation. You have to disband your organization, whatever we decide is inappropriate. But you're also going to get prosecuted. And the message there is that closing it down is not enough. We never want to see it come up again. And if Jimmy Lai can go down the block and form another Apple, we're going to stop him. And we're going to show the world that we're going to stop him by arresting him. And it's not just arresting because arresting under some laws may mean a few months in jail. But under this national security law, just today, the magistrates court authorized the moving of Jimmy Lai's case to the court of first instance what was traditionally called the High Court in Hong Kong. And in that court, the charges against him can result in a sentence of life in prison. Oh, God. So by moving it, if they didn't move it, then they would face limits on how many years they could sentence him to. So removing it to a place where he could be sentenced to life in prison is what just took place this very day. That's awful. So I mean, they're good at it. You know, you have to give them credit. They're good at it. They're better than Vladimir Putin is certainly, and they don't use violence. They use this persecution under color of law approach. And although, as you mentioned, there are people who continue to protest, both in Russia and in China in Hong Kong, it seems to me they're in Hong Kong, they're good enough to really stop this. And it really has no chance of coming back. Right. There's a, there's really no protest now. I think the other day is a couple people were walking down the street. Three of them trying to protest that there's just virtually none. It takes a lot of courage to even express an opposing view. So the result is people in the media, for example, find it hard to use to be because in Asian society professors are highly affected and they're often consulted by the media to provide analysis of events and developments that are going on. But now reporters that contact me over here in New York from are doing so because they can't find anybody locally willing to speak up on these issues. It's very risky for them to do so. So this is, is a problem, not just deprive the people of hard news, but also of analysis. Yeah, well it sounds like state TV in Russia, doesn't it? It's the same kind of news control thing. And that's got to be part of the program. If you want to do an autocratic takeover, you control all the information. Let's talk about information. Here we are, you and me on a formidable news organization, Think Tech Hawaii. And we're discussing this freely. We're discussing it within the First Amendment of the United States, such as still exist. And we are discussing it for the world to hear because Think Tech dreams everywhere. At the same time, in order for you to get this information, I had to leave China. Somebody had to keep you current so you could keep us current. And you're not keeping us current only on Think Tech. You're keeping us current in all your writings, your university appearances, your panel programs and webinars. So if you get out there and speaking in various forums, is that for I, and therefore, you know, the information that you were getting from China is being propagated in a number of places. So how dangerous is this for them, you know, with whom you speak in China, in Hong Kong, and for you, a person who knows theoretically you're in violation of the National Security Law, aren't you? Don't answer that. Don't answer that. Well, yeah, theoretically, you as well. But I'm not going back anytime soon, I'll tell you that. The National Security Law applies worldwide. And so if you're bringing a hatred or contempt to Hong Kong's government or China's government, then you might be accused of that. It's a problem, but a lot of this stuff, you know, this is the sort of beauty and tragedy of a quasi open society. Places like North Korea have probably the worst human rights violations in the world, but very little of it is reported because nobody can go there and report on it. In societies that as I mentioned earlier, these sort of soft authoritarian or quasi democratic societies with liberal constitutional structures and promises of human rights and free speech, even while they're often violated, I mean, carried out in the breach they're violated a lot. A lot of information can get out of those societies, international reporting, and so on. And then of course some people leaving and coming abroad and talking about what they experienced, and so on. So they leak, these societies leak a lot of information. And I think that's kind of what almost all of us work with we can watch it from day to day. I told you earlier that in the courts now when they hear these hearings, they forbid the reporters from reporting anything except the outcome. So they're trying, they try to plug the leaks, but it's hard to do so at 100%. Because a lot of what's happening can be combined with, you know, legal training that you and I have to sort of understand what's happening. What the reporters are allowed to report so we can get get a pretty good sense of, of what's happening. Now people like myself and yourself. Basically, your, your new role, I know you are a longtime practicing lawyer, but your new role at think tech is, is the media. And so you, you're basically doing your job, that's what you're doing, you're not trying to do it more than that. I'm the same, I'm an academic in my field is constitutional development and human rights. So that's what I talk about. I try to provide analysis. And that's that's kind of what one honestly has to do. And if people can't do it on the ground, then probably that's an important service because otherwise it won't be done. You know, we were talking before the show about all these elements on the news cycle, all these news streams. And, you know, it is depressing to hear all these, a number of streams, including Hong Kong and Russia and other places, several other places in the world where autocrats have emerged, where constitutional law has become a joke. And of course, where you have war crimes, atrocities, you have manipulation of information, you have imprisonment and violation of any sense of civil liberties. And it just strikes me and the reason I say it bothers me emotionally is that I see it getting worse. I see it in more places. These news streams seem to be telling us that it's happening all over the bloody world. And so that must affect you, too. But what is your reaction to seeing all these news streams, including especially Hong Kong with so many other places where we have autocrats who are destroying democracy. I think, you know, of course I teach this human rights. So I'm constantly called upon to try to train youngsters, young people to be able to analyze and to cover these issues. And the human rights work a lot of young lawyers think it's all about going to court. When human rights are being violated on this level, it's rarely about going to court. It's about publicity. It's about putting it out there and constantly the old jargon was naming and shaming, but putting it out there and these regimes kind of help you because they're sometimes so outlandish. You know, like Putin, when people discover thousand dead bodies around the city, well, all that's all staged. You know, that's his claim. So, so it's so transparently false so that the government there's Nazis. No one really believes that probably even his supporters don't believe that they probably think it's clever argument. That's about it. So I think that's kind of the way this works. So when a regime goes too far and extreme measures. What we're seeing in Hong Kong, I think is that the nub of it is they're saying, well, Hong Kong is still the same that freedoms are protected. You as Kerry lab that's the current chief executive said you just need to know where the red line is that that's a famous line. Maybe a triple on time. Yeah, that's right. So I think that the transparency sometimes is of, you know, what they're saying is clear. And so the trick is to get it out there and get people to understand it. You hope and sometimes it's a futile hope, but you hope that eventually, you know, the right truth that someone would say will prevail and better decisions will be made. But but it's not it's not very optimistic at the moment. Yeah, well, you know, a lot of this has got to do with technology information technology, although social media is a great weapon for these order crats to use for Beijing to use on Hong Kong. But you know, social media works in two ways on the street. And you can you can have the protesters speak to social media, communicate, you know, create a mesh of protest electronically. And I think that might be happening to some limited degree in all these places. I mean, for example, yesterday there was a TV program in Moscow was being broadcast to the country and some retired Russian general made a speech in the middle of the TV program saying that the war in Ukraine was wrong. And there were war crimes happening and made these statements against Putin. I'm not sure where he is now. He could be a Lubionka prison right now, but it's like that woman who ran behind the newscaster with a sign said stop the war. But you have these little spurts of protest and they seem most effective when they are on the media. Most effective when they are in social media or electronically disseminated. My question to you is, you think that'll increase you think it's effective. You think it can turn this around. Well, this is the is the hope and that's why I'm saying, if you're outside of there, and this story is told and you're dedicated to telling the story and getting the truth out. Then you make it at least a little bit more viable for someone inside to push back that there's some, you know, support for what the story that they know is happening. They can find alternative sources of information, usually using VPNs to get around the state media. But it but it is so important that the story be told, just as you're doing right now. It may seem like you're far away, and we'll have little impact but it matters. What we say in the classroom, it matters what's reported and so on and the analysis that's provided. Well, I want to add a point to that or at least ask you about a point that seems to compliment that. And that is that we are speaking right now to a public lot of viewers. And, you know, it takes a while for streaming information to actually stream and reach its reach its highest destination in the world. And speaking, if you look at our stats, we're speaking to, to some extent, Hawaii, to some extent, the mainland US in smaller fractions, we're speaking to Europe and Asia. And it'll keep going, it'll be out there for a while and somebody may not know about it or see it or feel that it's worth viral, you know, reproduction for months. But my feeling is my question is, if everyone is streaming like this, does it have an effect beyond the immediate market. Is a show like this, or you're teaching in the University of India, or your your writings and teachings in the US. Is that likely to get beyond the immediate market. I think it shapes the general political culture. But the problem we face is that the other side is speaking to, and they're pushing back and they, they find an audience just today is reading how Orban and hungry that he's widely admired by a lot of people in certain political sectors in America. So they he's a he's sort of against liberal constitutionalism liberal democracy. He wants illiberal democracy. And so that's the challenge today. And then a lot of people who won't hear you because their information is in a bubble that only says things that they want to hear. How do you reach them and I think this is the biggest challenge that we're facing with free speech today is, is this problem of disinformation within these information bubbles, and how can we respond to it and still be committed to free speech. It's, it's a kind of a contradiction there. So we're drawing those lines of where we will control that kind of thing is has been proven very difficult. We have to be on my about it though I was telling you before the show that think tank has had a remarkable increase because of the covert and zoom model we've created during coven. We have a remarkable increase in the in the places in the world where our guests and hosts originate. We have shows that originated in Africa and Latin America and in Europe. We have lots of guests and very disparate places all over the world we have really thousands of people who appear remotely and so, maybe I'm taking this too far but it seems to me that in the world of zoom, the post coven. In the coven zoom world we live in. You know, this process that you're talking about this process of proliferating social media and other, I don't want to say underground but other other electronic protest is probably in dynamic. It's probably growing. And if you look again in a year or two or three, you find more of this of the globalism. Okay, of electronic protest. What do you think. Of course, and even as a professor when I used to go to a campus and give a lecture, I could have 20 people in the audience or 30 whatever depends on you know this this situation what I'm talking about. But now a couple hundred is not unusual, because I do it online I have don't have to go anywhere. So I think that's very evident. The problem of course is is like I said it's people on both sides of all of these things. And Putin is controlling a lot of information to millions of people. So the challenge is how do you get, you know, reasonable analysis past all the obstacles and and have a chance to respond to and discredit disinformation that's being passed it affects the election in America. It affects everybody everywhere. So the Hong Kong story is in a way a kind of classic repression, where you just intimidate everybody into silence. And most of us also face many challenges in this regard, and in on the use of this media you're talking about. Well clearly Michael you've got to keep on doing it. And we have to keep on talking to you. I appreciate that. I want to get back to Hawaii but it's something that I'm trying to work in. I'm looking forward to that Michael Michael Michael C. Davis here on Think Tech on global connections talking about Hong Kong and the things going on there, which will undoubtedly continue and we'll continue in our discussion with him. Thank you Michael. Thank you. Mahalo.