Thank you, Chair and committee, for having me.
I am the managing director of the Hong Kong Democracy Council, HKDC, based in Washington, D.C. We are the first U.S.-based organization advocating on behalf of Hong Kong's autonomy and basic freedoms that is led by U.S. citizens. Our mission is focused on influencing and informing U.S. policy towards Hong Kong and China.
I want to make that clear up front, because on July 30, I went to bed and woke up the next morning with notification and media reports that I am now a wanted felon, or at least a wanted fugitive. Chinese media leaked a report on July 30 that the Hong Kong authorities and police have issued arrest warrants for six pro-democracy activists who are promoting democracy in Hong Kong but are currently overseas. I am one of the six, and the charges are for incitement of secession and collusion with foreign powers. This was part of the national security law that was concocted by Beijing in secret and then rolled out on July 1 and implemented at the same time it was made public for the first time. Both of the crimes that I am allegedly accused of are punishable by life in prison.
I am different from the others on the list and others who have experienced and encountered harassment and arrests in Hong Kong since implementation of the law. I have been an American citizen for 25 years. I left Hong Kong and arrived in Los Angeles, California, in 1990. However, the national security law in article 38 states the following specifically: This Law shall apply to offences under this Law committed against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from outside the Region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the Region.
In other words, every provision of the national security law applies to everyone outside of Hong Kong. Nobody is beyond the law's reach, not me as a U.S. citizen on American soil, not the 85,000 Americans who are living and working in Hong Kong, and not the estimated 200,000 to 250,000 Canadian citizens who are living and working in Hong Kong itself.
My surprising status as an international fugitive illustrates the imminent threat to freedom and free expression that not only Hong Kong pro-democracy activists are experiencing and have been experiencing, but also that we have been warning over the past year is coming to not just American soil but Canadian soil.
Since the implementation of the national security law, we have already seen the direct impact it has had on crackdowns in Hong Kong, specifically with regard to the rights of free speech, free press, free assembly and protest. The first arrest made under the national security law in Hong Kong was of a young person who was wearing a T-shirt that said “Free Hong Kong”. The authorities also targeted a 19-year-old protester whose crime was having a sticker on the back of his phone that simply had the word “conscience” written in Chinese.
In the following days, the government disqualified 12 separate pro-democracy candidates from the LegCo election, which the government eventually postponed for a year. Benny Tai, a professor, who was a co-founder with my father of the umbrella movement in 2014, was ousted from his job as a tenured professor at Hong Kong University. Four young protesters were arrested for posting online that the government claims were inciting secession. Schools have now banned the use of slogans and the singing of the protest anthem Glory to Hong Kong in all schools.
As the assault on basic freedoms has been happening, as Ms. Boyajian pointed out, Americans, Canadians and folks in western countries have been watching from afar, from a safe distance, with solidarity through social media and our solidarity protests and rallies. But now, as my experience has shown, you don't have to be in Hong Kong to be in trouble with the Chinese regime and the Hong Kong government. Simply tweeting or re-tweeting someone else's tweet could earn you an arrest warrant and a prison sentence.
Article 38 as written can seem very outlandish, impractical and unenforceable. Its impact is not just in what it can or cannot do legally, but is designed to create a chilling effect that essentially threatens and tries to implicate anyone and everyone who is not just directly speaking out for Hong Kong, but is also connected to people who are speaking out to Hong Kong.
In my case, for example, I can no longer travel to Hong Kong or any countries with any active extradition treaties with Hong Kong or China, or any countries that have friendly relations with China, without risking arrest and almost certain extradition to the mainland. I cannot speak to my elderly parents in Hong Kong without opening them up to, and subjecting them to, investigation and invasive searches by the police. Even anyone who is in contact with me here and who is not in Hong Kong could be blacklisted by the Chinese government or by Chinese-backed financial interests, whose influence is vast, extending from Hollywood to the NBA, Apple and Zoom, which we are using right now for this meeting.
I might be the first to be targeted as a foreign citizen under the national security law, but I will not be the last, because if I can be a target, then anyone who speaks on behalf of Hong Kong, who speaks out against the CCP, can also be targeted.
As I said in my introduction, I am a second-generation pro-democracy advocate. Only about 18 months ago, I was in Hong Kong attending the trial of my father, the Reverend Chu Yiu Ming, who was arrested and then charged for his role in “inciting the protests of the 2014 umbrella movement”. He, along with eight others, was convicted of the charges. He was sentenced to two years and, fortunately, because of his age and health problems, his sentence was suspended. This has been happening and will continue to escalate more quickly and more broadly.
My father supported the student movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and helped to build the underground railroad that smuggled dissidents out of China into western countries. I was sent away in consideration of the anticipated risk involved in building those operations and being a part of that movement.
That crackdown has happened every day since June 4, 1989. It has been spreading rapidly in Hong Kong since July 1. Two weeks ago, it spread to American soil and it will soon be, and already is, on Canadian soil.
Human rights may not have been a priority in U.S. policies toward China a year ago, but you can be assured that human rights, along with the control and violation of human rights, is the top priority of the Chinese regime. I say this because without it, they will lose control of their government and lose the control they are trying so hard to implement, not just on the mainland and in Xinjiang and Tibet, but also in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and now in western nations.
Thank you for allowing me to speak today.