Thank you very much.
Thank you, honourable members, for the opportunity to testify before the Subcommittee on International Human Rights.
I am here as a representative of The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, whose primary focus is the release of political prisoners in Hong Kong, which is quite remarkable, because who among us would have though, even three years ago, that we'd be talking about political prisoners in Hong Kong, once a place that was known as one of the freest places in Asia.
However, thanks to the national security law that was imposed on Hong Kong in mid-2020 by the Chinese government, any criticism of the Chinese Communist Party or the Chinese state has essentially been criminalized. We have a situation where most pro-democracy newspapers have been closed and civil society has been destroyed.
I am particularly focused on.... I'd like to tell you a story in my five minutes about the Next Digital media group, where I was an independent non-executive director. It's a story, really, of seven of my former colleagues who are, as we speak, in jail. They're in jail mostly without trial, let alone conviction. They're just seven of the more than 10,000 people who have been arrested on political charges as a result of the anti-government activities of 2019 and 2020 in Hong Kong.
I'm a former independent non-executive director of Next Digital, a company that is or was listed on the stock exchange of Hong Kong. It had a market capitalization of about $100 million when it was destroyed in mid-2021 as a result of government action taken under the national security law.
By focusing on my seven former colleagues, they can stand for the 10,000-plus people in Hong Kong, and really the 7,500,000 people who have been oppressed under the national security law. Their case demonstrates the way in which the Chinese Communist Party and its enablers in the Hong Kong government and private sector are engaging in lawfare, using the veneer of the legal system that underpins well-governed democracies, not for justice or to reach a fair verdict but in pursuit of a predetermined political end. In this case, it was the silencing of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily.
The national security law is a broad, all-encompassing law that effectively criminalizes any criticism of the Chinese Communist Party by anyone anywhere in the world. In fact, last week one of my colleagues in London, Benedict Rogers from Hong Kong Watch, was threatened with jail if he didn't shut down his website, a London-based website, run by a British citizen that was deemed criminal by the Hong Kong authorities.
In the case of Next Digital, first the shares of the founder and largest shareholder, Jimmy Lai, were frozen by the secretary for security, because he said he had reason to believe that Mr. Lai had violated the national security law. There was no court order. Mr. Lai was already in jail, and at the same time, the secretary for security froze three Singapore-based bank accounts held by Mr. Lai at OCBC and Citi.
I mention this because many people are still under the illusion that Hong Kong is a place that cares about rule of law and property rights, and that it still has something left of its old days as a rule of law and free market oriented society that would tolerate, even welcome, free press and free discussion.
It's important to note that the secretary for security provided no evidence to back his claim that Mr. Lai had violated the national security law, nor did he seek a court order, let alone take the case to trial, and prove Mr. Lai guilty before a jury.
One month later, in mid-June 2021, authorities took a further series of action. They sent 550 armed police to our newspaper headquarters. They arrested the chief executive officer, Cheung Kim-hung; the editor-in-chief, Ryan Law, and detained other staff. Mr. Cheung Kim-hung and Mr. Law have been held without bail since that time. They also await trial.
Four other former colleagues have been held without bail since the summer of 2021. I think it's important to say their names, because these are individuals. They are seven among hundreds of thousands of people who are facing political charges in Hong Kong. They are Chan Pui-man, Yeung Ching-kee, Fung Wai-kong, and Lam Man-chung.
The secretary for security then froze the bank accounts of our operating companies. We were unable to accept payments from our nearly 600,000 digital subscribers. Although our employees were afraid and some of them had notes, computers and documents seized, they continued to put out the newspaper until we were finally forced to close, printing on that last edition a record one million copies, which were quickly sold.
Starved of cash, we had no choice but to shut the newspaper, and the directors ended up resigning, yet the government is still pursuing us. There are four different investigations, we're told, that are going on against us, and the government seems determined to prove that this has nothing to do with freedom of the press, but everything to do with a mismanaged company.
My ask for Canada is not quite as dramatic or as far-reaching as some of the other panellists, but there are something like 300,000 Canadian passport holders in Hong Kong. I hope that you continue to advocate for them, journalists and non-journalists alike. I hope that, given the experience that Canada has unfortunately had with China's hostage-taking approach to diplomacy, you will put human rights front and centre in every conversation that your ambassadors, other diplomats and other officials have with Chinese officials and Hong Kong officials.
I would also recommend Magnitsky-style sanctions, not only for senior Hong Kong government officials—because they will be taken care of by the Chinese authorities—but also for middle-ranking officials, for judges and also for the enablers in the private sector, who have continued to pursue not only former directors of Next Digital but also other people. They are doing part of the government's dirty work in trying to destroy freedom in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is—