Hong Kong law under Beijing’s shadow
By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - Where is Zhou Yongjun? A key figure in the 1989 Tiananmen Square
uprising against the Chinese government, the 42-year-old dissident simply
disappeared after traveling from Macau to Hong Kong on September 28 last year
and hasn't been seen since. Zhou, who now lives in the United States and holds
a Green Card entitling him to work there, was reportedly traveling on a forged
Malaysian passport under a false name with the hope of visiting his family on
the mainland.
Hong Kong authorities apparently seized him on his arrival from Macau. After
that, his story turns into a dark mystery whose uncovered secrets could have
profound implications for the "one country, two systems" formula that has
governed the former British and Portuguese colonies of Hong Kong and Macau
since
their return to Chinese rule in 1997 and 1999, respectively. China’s then
paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, first uttered that famous dictum in 1984.
At the time, Deng was immersed in negotiations with British prime minister
Margaret Thatcher over the future status of Hong Kong, which was controlled by
Britain for more than 150 years. The concept was again invoked in talks with
the Portuguese, who formally colonized Macau in 1887 after establishing a
trading post there 330 years earlier, and is a cornerstone of the autonomy
guaranteed in the current constitutions of the two territories.
Those constitutions pointedly agree to honor the different economic, political
and legal systems operating on the mainland and in Hong Kong and Macau. While
in Macau this has largely meant supporting a casino boom that has turned a
formerly sleepy Portuguese enclave into the Las Vegas of Asia. In Hong Kong it
has been tied to the city's fledgling democracy and long-standing tradition of
rule of law.
Now, 12 years after the handover, democratic progress has stalled in Hong Kong,
and Zhou's case raises serious questions about the independence and integrity
of the city's legal system.
Zhou's girlfriend, Zhang Yuewei, who lives with Zhou in Los Angeles, flew into
Hong Kong last week to air her allegations of Zhou's illegal detention.
According to Zhang, Zhou has been in prisons on the mainland since Hong Kong
immigration authorities bundled him into a car, drove him across the border and
handed him over to officials in the city of Shenzhen.
All this, she says, she learned from telephone calls and e-mails from a former
inmate in a Shenzhen prison where Zhou was also detained. She claims a second
informant, a former inmate at another Shenzhen jail, told Zhou's family that he
had been forced to change his name to Wang Hua.
The family, who live in the city of Suining in southwestern Sichuan province,
has since been told that Zhou was transferred to a prison in Sichuan, where he
faces charges of financial fraud.
So far, Hong Kong officials refuse to discuss the case.
According to the Dui Hua Foundation, a human-rights group, at least 30 people
involved in the 1989 uprising are still in prison in China. The student-led
demonstrations were crushed on June 4 of that year when Deng ordered the
Chinese military to clear Tiananmen Square. Hundreds, if not thousands, were
killed in the crackdown.
Of Zhou's decision to return to China, Zhang told the Hong Kong media, "He
insisted on going because he wanted to see his family. His father has had a
stroke and is partially paralyzed, and his mother has heart disease."
If true, the allegations made by Zhang, the mother of Zhou's 18-month-old
daughter, would represent the most damning indication yet that the so-called
autonomy, legal and otherwise, of Hong Kong and Macau is a sham that can be
easily suspended at the command of the central government.
Let's forget for the moment, if Zhang's story is borne out, the stupidity of
Zhou's actions. Yes, it is a crime to carry a forged passport under a false
name, and Zhou had already been jailed for three years on the mainland in 1998
for entering the country illegally via Hong Kong. Prior to that, he had lived
in the US since he fled China in 1992.
Foolish as he was to try again to return to China, however, the crime he
reportedly committed occurred in Hong Kong, not on the mainland. Given the
legal guarantees of Hong Kong's constitution, called the Basic Law, Zhou's case
should have been handled by local authorities, which arguably broke the law if
they handed him over to their mainland counterparts in Shenzhen. Standard
immigration procedure in a case like Zhou's is to send the guilty party back to
his point of embarkation.
There would be no legal justification for handing Zhou over to the mainland,
although there certainly could be a strong political incentive for such a move
- and there's the rub that places Hong Kong's vaunted independence and autonomy
in an increasingly dubious light.
Other high-profile, post-handover legal cases have also put the Basic Law to
the test, including those of notorious Hong Kong gangster Cheung Tze-keung,
known as "Big Spender", and convicted murderer Li Yuhui, both of whom committed
crimes in Hong Kong but were apprehended and executed on the mainland; there is
no capital punishment in Hong Kong.
While those cases may have raised important questions in the legal field,
however, they elicited little public sympathy. Zhou's case could be different.
First, there is the possible further legal snafu of Zhou being apprehended in
Hong Kong and subsequently delivered to mainland police by local authorities.
Then there are the political implications of the case. And, finally, the
chairman of Hong Kong's Democratic Party, lawyer Albert Ho Chun-yan, has signed
on as the dissident's legal representative in Hong Kong, and he plans to sue
the Hong Kong government on Zhou's behalf.
Silence by Hong Kong officials, from Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen on
down, will not make this case go away; indeed, it only adds to the
international perception that the city's autonomy is slipping away.
At the same time, it doesn't help Hong Kong's international image that, just as
Zhou's story is making headlines, the wife of an unsavory friend of Beijing,
President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, has been welcomed back into the city after
receiving diplomatic immunity for an alleged assault she committed seven months
ago on a British photographer.
Freelance photographer Richard Jones, who was snapping pictures of Grace Mugabe
as she left the five-star Kowloon Shangri-la Hotel, charges that Zimbabwe's
first lady flew into a rage and ordered her bodyguard to hold him while she
struck him repeatedly. Jones suffered cuts and bruises on his head and face,
which he says were caused by the diamond rings the first lady was wearing.
Mugabe left the city without being charged and, two months later, the city's
Department of Justice announced that it would not pursue the case because she
had been granted diplomatic immunity.
Then, last February, two bodyguards for the Mugabes' daughter, Bona, who
attends a university in Hong Kong, were accused of attacking two other
photographers as they attempted to take photographs of her emerging from her
luxury residence. Again, officials decided not to prosecute, although they are
investigating whether the two guards were working in the city illegally on
tourist visas.
For most ordinary citizens, Hong Kong's justice system purrs along 12 years
after the handover. For cases that are sensitive to Beijing, however, justice
can be denied.
Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached at
kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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