Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Since the national security law has come into force in Hong Kong in July 2020, over 100 pro-democracy activists have been arrested and are awaiting trial. Under the draconian law, they face 10 years to life in prison, with high-profile activists like Joshua Wong and Jimmy Lai now facing a carousel of court appearances and jail sentences that look set to continue into the immediate future. The Chinese Communist Party has moved swiftly to use this law and new culture of fear to silence dissent, firing pro-democracy academics and civil servants who refuse to swear allegiance to Beijing, rewriting Hong Kong's electoral system, introducing national security education to brainwash children as young as six, and steadily censoring the Internet and broadcast.
Journalists and judges for the moment are the two holdouts against Beijing's total control of the city. Both are finding themselves increasingly under assault. For the foreign press, this has come in the form of visa denials and, in the BBC's case, an outright ban. Local journalists fare far worse, risking fines or imprisonment for reporting. This was the case for the investigative reporter, Bao Choy, who was recently fined for exposing police corruption. Hong Kong authorities have also called for the closing of Apple Daily and directed the public broadcaster to purge investigative documentaries from its online archives. The Hong Kong police commissioner has warned that the national security law could be used in the future to target the spreading of so-called fake news.
The city has a long history of an independent judiciary, and the rule of law is the cornerstone of its success as a global financial centre, yet pro-Beijing outlets continue to call for judicial reform on an almost daily basis. Carrie Lam last week warned of government intervention against the Hong Kong Bar Association.
In the courtroom, things do not fare much better. Judges are hand-picked by Beijing. Juries are denied, and bail hearings now go on so long that there are reports of defendants collapsing and needing medical treatment. In the recent bail hearings of 47 pro-democracy activists, the judges considered only two narrow facts: the public profile of the accused and their record of opposition to government policy.
In a recent report published by Hong Kong Watch on “red capital”, we found that the speed at which Beijing has dismantled Hong Kong's autonomy has been made possible by economic coercion and the steady takeover of the city's economy through the influx of capital from the mainland.
Hong Kong is the canary in the coal mine. It provides a stark lesson on the cost of economic dependency on Beijing and the CCP's ability to co-opt business and utilize economic leverage to great effect. We recently saw this play out in Europe, where Hungary blocked the introduction of a package of EU measures out of fear of losing Chinese investment.
Beijing would have you believe that this disagreement is cultural, that potential conflict is ideological and that the solution lies in private dialogue. I would urge the members of this committee to avoid falling into this trap. For thousands of years prior to the formalization of international human rights conventions, Chinese philosophers promoted the idea of human dignity and respect for human life. So, the next time you hear that the treatment of Uighurs, Tibetans and Hong Kongers at the hands of the CCP is just a result of cultural differences, don't let that fool you.
Those brave protestors on the street in Hong Kong in 2019 and citizens in Taiwan today demonstrate that people of Chinese ethnicity value not only human rights but freedom, democracy and the rule of law as well. That is why, in the final analysis, democracies like Canada must do all they can to support them. This should include introducing Magnitsky sanctions against Hong Kong officials, making it easier for Hong Kongers to claim asylum in Canada through an upgraded lifeboat scheme, working toward the creation of a UN special rapporteur for Hong Kong, and urgently reviewing Canada's economic dependency on China.
Thank you very much.