“All Is Well in Hong Kong,” Says Sydney’s “Law Society Journal.” 1. Slandering Pro-Democracy Activists

The Australian legal magazine published a pro-Chinese propaganda article, and refuses to tell who its authors were.

By Mark Tarrant

April 10, 2025

“Deep Harbour”: The Article in Sydney’s “Law Society Journal.”

Last October, on the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China a hit piece on human rights in Hong Kong titled “Deep Harbour” was published by the “Law Society Journal” (LSJ), a quarterly journal published by the Law Society of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

The 9-page “Deep Harbour” article, whose authors remain a mystery despite enquiries, claims in its preface to be a serious discussion about the challenges Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” framework is facing by “recent political storms and growing influence from Beijing,” and “whether its legal system can stay afloat amid mounting challenges to its autonomy.”

The authors attempt to pick the pockets of Western democracies by comparing the PRC’s brutal regime with Australia’s Westminster parliamentary democracy.

Under the heading “Constitutional obligation to enact national security law,” the authors state, “Each nation around the world has enacted their own security laws to protect their national security.” They then try to justify Hong Kong’s draconian National Security Law, where holding a candle in remembrance of the Tiananmen massacre victims is now illegal, by making reference to Australia’s Constitutional authority to pass laws to defend itself and various criminal penalties for terrorism, treason, and treachery.

As a “punchline,” the article makes reference to the unprecedented 2018 Australian “Witness J” national security case where a former Australian intelligence officer was tried, sentenced, and imprisoned in secrecy.

What the authors fail to mention is that the “Witness J” case was heavily criticized in Australia, with the Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus in 2023 stating that secret trials are anathema to Australia’s criminal justice system, undermine public confidence in the legal system, and processes are being put in place so that this never happens again.

North Korea and Iran have more in common with the PRC than Australia ever will—criticizing the leadership in those countries will result in a lengthy prison sentence or death.

The authors readily found a Western commentator willing to ignore the millions of pro-democracy Hong Kongers and to claim that the Beijing-imposed National Security Law of 30 June 2020, which bypassed Hong Kong’s own elected legislative council, was justified. This was Western Sydney University’s Adjunct Professor Jocelyn Chey, saying: “[I]t’s not possible, as many commentators do, to say that it was another example of China riding roughshod over the people of Hong Kong and imposing this legislation…”

Adjunct Professor Jocelyn Chey. From X.

The LSJ Editor decided Chey’s insight was so profound that it warranted a special “pull quote” highlight box complete with her smiling photo.

Under the heading “Democracy and the rule of law,” the authors write that the rule of law in Hong Kong “is still ranked ahead of nations like the United States of America.”

Is this an attempt by the authors to blur over the jailing of a Hong Kong student in 2023 for her social media posts calling for an independent Hong Kong whilst studying in Japan, or the jailing of a man in September 2024 for wearing a protest T-shirt?

Sebastien Lai will be arrested if he were to travel to Hong Kong to visit his father, jailed democracy activist Jimmy Lai, who is currently fighting to avoid being locked forever under Adjunct Professor Jocelyn Chey-endorsed National Security Law. This would not happen to a son or daughter if they were to travel to the USA to see their incarcerated parent.

And why did the authors exclude Lord Sumption’s June 2024 statement saying that the rule of law in Hong Kong is profoundly compromised in areas where the government has strong opinions?

The LSJ editor found another recipient for a highlight quote box.

Australian National University College of Law Associate Professor Stephen Thompson, who was working in Hong Kong during the 2019 protests, complains in the article that “My university was completely shut down… It was a battleground between students and the police. The place was smashed up. It was a very unsettling time.”

Thomson’s quote box including a smiling photo has him exclaiming: “There’s a high degree of autonomy [in Hong Kong].” The “Financial Times” editorial board had a more honest appraisal with the headline “The end of one country, two systems in Hong Kong.”

The mysterious unnamed authors write, “On 1 July, protestors broke into, vandalised, damaged and occupied the Legislation Council building” [note: the correct name is “Legislative” Council—not “Legislation”].

In his 2020 book “City on Fire—The Fight For Hong Kong,” Australian author Antony Dapiran, a longtime Hong Kong resident and lawyer, writes at page 92 about the protestors’ graffiti inside the Hong Kong Legislative Council chamber: “Protestors deliberately chose symbols of power in Hong Kong [and] of the flawed Hong Kong political system as the targets of their ire.” “Inside the LegCo chamber, they painted out the words ‘Peoples Republic of China’ from the phrase ‘Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the Peoples Republic of China’ in the Hong Kong emblem; they tore up a copy of the Basic Law: and they vandalised the seats occupied by pro-Beijing legislators.”

Flags hung by protesters inside the Legislative Council building. Credits.

“Walls throughout the building were covered in graffiti, much of it delivering pointed messages to Beijing: ‘Hong Kong is not China yet’; ‘China will pay for its crimes against Uyghur Muslims’. Other graffiti bore the key slogans of the protest movement.”

In 2019, I met with one of the young protestors who had broken into the Hong Kong Legislative Council building.

Following his release by the Hong Kong Police, he had fled to Australia, still wearing his t-shirt covered with blue dye from the police watercannon. Agents of the PRC chased him down a street near his home in Brisbane, as reported by “The Guardian. “

Do the authors of the LSJ article believe this protestor should be sent back to Hong Kong to face National Security Law charges for defacing “the interior [of the Legislative Council chamber] with anti-government and anti-China slogans?”

Source: bitterwinter.org