zaiShanghai

A poster­board col­lage in Hong Kong Times Square declaims its mes­sage along­side grue­some images of alleged tor­ture vic­tims: "Remember this name: Sujiatun. It will one day be as infa­mous as Auschwitz." Sujiatun, a dis­trict of Shenyang in north­east­ern China's Liaoning Province, is claimed by activists to be the site of a forced labor camp and med­ical cen­ter spe­cial­iz­ing in organ har­vest­ing, and though it's not any­thing you'd ever hear about in main­land China, in Hong Kong such charges are made openly.

Though the Chinese gov­ern­ment vig­or­ously denies the charges, the fact that activists in Hong Kong can pub­licly air such claims just kilo­me­ters from main­land China is remark­able, espe­cially to any­one who has spent time in the main­land where media cen­sor­ship sti­fles dis­cus­sion of issues that Beijing wishes to down­play.

The Falun Gong pro­test­ers are just one of many groups found in Hong Kong who are non-existent—or at least largely silent—in main­land China. Their vocal activism is made pos­si­ble by Hong Kong's con­tin­u­ing role as China’s first spe­cial admin­is­tra­tive region (SAR). This means that Hong Kong enjoys a high degree of auton­omy in every area out­side of for­eign rela­tions and defense.

The legacy of British rule

On July 1, 1997, the United Kingdom trans­ferred sov­er­eignty of Hong Kong to the PRC after roughly 156 years of British colo­nial rule, which dated back to the First Opium War of 1839–1842 and was briefly inter­rupted by Japan’s con­trol dur­ing World War II.

But the city was not all that the U.K. handed over to China.

150 years of Western influ­ence remain firmly embed­ded in the city and its res­i­dents, a pop­u­la­tion with dras­ti­cally dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal per­spec­tives from those held by Chinese liv­ing in main­land China.

Freedom of the press, free­dom of reli­gion, uni­ver­sal suf­frage, and an unblocked Internet are lead­ing items on a long list of human rights that Hong Kong cit­i­zens enjoy—and that res­i­dents of China gen­er­ally do not.

Free speech and Falun Gong

The group tak­ing the most vis­i­ble advan­tage of Hong Kong’s right to peace­fully protest has, per­haps, been Falun Gong. Also known as Falun Dafa, a spir­i­tual dis­ci­pline that blends ele­ments of tra­di­tional Chinese med­i­cine, med­i­ta­tion, exer­cises, and reli­gious prac­tice, was denounced as a sub­ver­sive cult by the CCP after it quickly rose to pop­u­lar­ity dur­ing the mid-nineties.

Eventually, the num­ber of fol­low­ers reached as high as an esti­mated 70 million—exceeding the num­ber of mem­bers in the Chinese Communist Party and mak­ing one in every 17 Chinese cit­i­zens a Falun Gong prac­ti­tioner.

On July 20, 1999, the Chinese gov­ern­ment declared Falun Gong an ille­gal sub­ver­sive prac­tice and began open­ing labor camps sim­i­lar to those from the Mao Zedong era (1949–1976). Over the next decade, accord­ing to pro-Falun Gong activists, an esti­mated 200,000 prac­ti­tion­ers were ille­gally detained in about 300 camps located through­out the coun­try.

In Hong Kong today, dozens of infor­ma­tion booths and stands line streets through­out the city. You don't have to look far to find accu­sa­tions of tor­ture and geno­cide, com­plete with hor­ri­fy­ing images of Falun Gong prac­ti­tion­ers who were allegedly beaten after being arrested and detained extra-judicially.

Free speech and China's con­tested mod­ern his­tory

Falun Gong Today, a news­pa­per pro­duced by vol­un­teers that aims to shed light on alleged human rights vio­la­tions inflicted on Falun Gong prac­ti­tion­ers, is a pri­mary vehi­cle of activism. Another polit­i­cal pres­ence is the Hong Kong Service Center for Quitting the Chinese Communist Party, which runs pub­lic stands that boldly por­tray var­i­ous con­tro­ver­sial events in recent Chinese his­tory, includ­ing the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the Tian'anmen Square Massacre.

The toll in human lives lost is unclear, as gath­er­ing pre­cise data on sen­si­tive sub­jects in China has never been an exact sci­ence. And though crit­i­cism of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution are per­mit­ted to a sig­nif­i­cant degree in main­land China today, the events that brought a vio­lent end to 1989's pro-democracy protests remain a taboo sub­ject.

With regard to the Great Leap Forward (1959–1961), for exam­ple, Hong Kong infor­ma­tional booths may focus on the ill-conceived plan to boost China’s steel pro­duc­tion by forc­ing the entire coun­try to par­tic­i­pate in the steel industry—a dis­as­ter that resulted in great crop loss and helped lead to an esti­mated 30–40 mil­lion deaths by star­va­tion. The gov­ern­ment blamed the calamity on drought, which, though a fac­tor, was far from the sole cause. Though in main­land China today a num­ber of crit­i­cisms of such Mao-era poli­cies can be found both within and out­side of the Communist Party, they are rarely, if ever, as direct and accusatory as what can be found in Hong Kong on any given day.

One poster sum­ma­rizes the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) as "uncon­trol­lable red ter­ror." A Falun Gong Today piece calls it "noth­ing less than the destruc­tion of all tra­di­tional Chinese cul­ture and val­ues," and com­pares it to Ray Bradbury's "Farenheit 451," refer­ring to the des­e­cra­tion of libraries, tem­ples, and any­thing deemed counter-revolutionary, with addi­tional empha­sis on extremes: children beat and mur­dered par­ents, stu­dents rose up and attacked—and even killed—their teach­ers, and there were inci­dents of can­ni­bal­ism that Chinese gov­ern­ment reports doc­u­mented in Guangxi province.

It was a period so dark in Chinese his­tory that many who lived through it are for­bid­den by the CCP to speak of cer­tain aspects of it today. Open dis­cus­sion of the worst excesses—including fatal­ity esti­mates that run well into the millions—are down­played or sup­pressed.

Another poster illus­trates the Tian'anmen Square Massacre of 1989, in which the mil­i­tary gunned down unarmed stu­dent pro­test­ers in Beijing after months of sit-ins and hunger strikes. The Chinese gov­ern­ment main­tains that no more than 241 civil­ians were killed, while other esti­mates run as high as 5,000.

Challenging China's sta­tus quo

As a final exam­ple of how far free speech in Hong Kong can go, con­sider the Epoch Times, a news­pa­per that recently pub­lished a book now freely dis­trib­uted in Hong Kong called Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party. In it, nine some­what rad­i­cal view­points on the Chinese gov­ern­ment are offered, including "How the CCP is an Anti-Universe Force" and "How the CCP is an Evil Cult." While these state­ments may seem out­landish, they have been gain­ing trac­tion in Hong Kong and, as many reports indi­cate, among dis­si­dents through­out China.

The ques­tion remain­ing is whether this safe haven for free press and polit­i­cal dis­sent will remain. Recent exam­ples of skir­mishes between rep­re­sen­ta­tives of state power and cham­pi­ons of free speech include the case of Kiri Choy, a Hong Kong-based reporter, who is cur­rently suing Hong Kong police chief Wai Hung Andy Tsang for mak­ing an arrest that she claims was ille­gal while she was con­duct­ing an inter­view. Chun-yan Ho, chair­man of the Hong Kong Democratic Party, said dur­ing Choy’s press con­fer­ence that "it is clear that the Chinese Communist Party has inter­fered with a series of events in Hong Kong." Do such events sig­nal a tight­en­ing of the CCP's grip on Hong Kong? Or will Hong Kong’s tra­di­tion of human rights and an open media inevitably spill over to main­land China?

Regardless, it is clear is that in terms of free speech, Hong Kong is play­ing a vital role as a polit­i­cal gate­way for crit­i­cism of the PRC and dis­sent against its poli­cies. Only time will tell if that gate is to close.

All pho­tos of Hong Kong taken by J. Zach Hollo.