Straight out of China’s totalitarian playbook

In Hong Kong, another cataclysm strikes.

Even in the midst of a pandemic slaughtering the global socioeconomic order and which has claimed thousands of lives already, the horrible news broke out: the Hong Kong legislature voted “nearly unanimously” to approve a law proposed by China that strives to suppress alleged acts of “terrorism, subversion, secession,” or any other movement deemed to be threatening the national security of China’s special administrative region.

Early this week, this controversial national security law has sparked new protests in Hong Kong, spurring its residents to hold protest actions violating the physical distancing protocols of the semi-autonomous city as a last act of defiance against Beijing’s growing encroachment of Hong Kong.

Turns out, it did not take that long enough before China acted to materialize its wet dream of controlling Hong Kong.

To understand why Hong Kong’s people continue to put their lives on the line of fire to defy Beijing’s concerted efforts to control their city isn’t rocket science: from the time China allowed Hong Kong’s electorate to freely vote among the candidates the ruling party had chosen, to the attempted passage of the extradition bill, until the ascension of this national security law onto the scene — all these maneuvers are aimed at imposing Mainland China’s totalitarian regime on Hong Kong, which will mean nothing for the people but the demise of civil liberties, human rights, and all that makes Hong Kong a free and autonomous city-state.

In fact, since word came out about the China-backed National Security Law, all forecasts by observers, pundits, and Hong Kongers themselves point to a bleak future: the death of the ineffectual “One Country, Two Systems” balderdash introduced by China when British imperialists ceded Hong Kong back to it in 1997.

Or simply, “The End of Hong Kong.”

Indeed, it is.

The New York Times’ Shanghai bureau chief Keith Bradsher’s breaking news report about the law’s passage today provides us a glimpse into the law, and its possible implications on the life of Hong Kong and its residents: “As Beijing hashes out the specifics of the national security legislation in the coming weeks, the final rules will help determine the fate of Hong Kong, including how much of the city’s autonomy will be preserved or how much Beijing will tighten its grip.”

The final rules will help determine the fate.

This sentence alone illustrates the disconsolate future Hong Kong faces under China’s radar — since the first question here would be, “who would determine such rules?” It would be nonsensical to think that Hong Kong will have a free say into the crafting of the rules embedded in a law that China itself had pushed for in the Hong Kong legislature.

[According to NY Times, the Standing Committee of China’s legislature would be drafting the rules before this law takes effect. Oh, boy.]

But that’s not yet the huge bummer. Bradsher’s report quotes Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, saying this: “We are a very free society, so for the time being, people have the freedom to say whatever they want to say.” Reassuring to hear, right? Well, Lam breaks the dam with these words:

“Rights and freedoms are not absolute.”

Sounds familiar? Because, like Lam, our very own Fuhrer Rodrigo Duterte espouses that kind of ideology on human rights.

Anyway, with that kind of worldview on human rights emanating from Hong Kong’s chief executive, the people of Hong Kong can anticipate no less than a complete crackdown on dissent against the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

Bradsher’s report continues with concrete prospects surrounding the city once this law takes effect (the closest date would be September this year):

Early signals from Chinese authorities point to a crackdown once the law takes effect, which is expected by September. Activist groups could be banned. Courts could impose long jail sentences for national security violations. China’s feared security agencies could operate openly in the city.

Under the Beijing-backed National Security Law, any and all acts perceived to be carrying out, as well as materials deemed to be inciting to, acts of subversion, treason, terrorism, and other “threats to national security” will be outlawed and penalized.

Since it is expected that China, through the slavish Hong Kong government, will discharge the proposed law, the amount of assurance an individual or a suspect can maintain that his or her rights would be respected by the authorities is zilch. Nada. And the law gives China the authority to deport into the Mainland suspects from Hong Kong, since the trial is also expected to take place in Beijing.

That notion itself can be as debilitating to a free society such as Hong Kong as it can be elsewhere: a scenario where an imperialist government guided by the doctrines of totalitarianism, bereft of any sensible and humanistic notion of human rights, would try and “prosecute” suspects alleged to be committing subversive, terrorist, or secessionist actions.

And in what way? Atrociously brutal methods of torture? Brutally atrocious means of confession extraction?

If it’s still abstract for anyone to imagine that happening in Hong Kong, it’s best to take a look at how China’s ruling party engenders a whole machine of mass state repression in the Mainland — and how this dangerous law would export to Hong Kong this brand of “Beijing justice.”

Human Rights Watch’s 2019 report on China did not mince words:

Authorities have carried out mass arbitrary detention, torture, and mistreatment of [13 million Turkic Muslims — including Uyghurs and ethnic Kazakhs] in various detention facilities, and increasingly imposed pervasive controls on daily life.

These “detention facilities,” in totalitarian China, are no more than “reeducation camps” serving to brainwash into blindly accepting the Chinese Communist Party’s ideologies and rule, without a grunt.

The same cruel fate goes with human rights activists, critics, and even religious conglomerations in China, HRW further reveals:

Human rights defenders continue to endure arbitrary detention, imprisonment, and enforced disappearance. The government maintains tight control over the internet, mass media, and academia. Authorities stepped up their persecution of religious communities, including prohibitions on Islam in Xinjiang, suppression of Christians in Henan province, and increasing scrutiny of Hui Muslims in Ningxia.

But not only that. As if a portrayal of George Orwell’s dystopia in 1984, China thrives in a police state — where mass surveillance through the massive deployments of 2.6 million CCTV cameras are the norm.

Without any regard or respect for individual right to personal privacy, China’s authorities go on a spree of data harvesting (the State’s collection ranges from DNA to voice samples), the development of a “big data” system crushing dissent as well as a system of massive surveillance through biometrics and CCTV, and the employment of a repressive “social credit system” where Chinese citizens’ rights and privileges hang on a reward-or-punishment balance based upon how Beijing’s authorities perceive an individual’s behavior. Any deviant attitude means a reduction of what a citizen can enjoy in the Mainland.

Things do not end here. Beyond the paramaters set in the proposed law, the scarier prospects reveal in the punishments included — and the law’s semantics.

Since Chinese authorities are not yet keen on hinting what constitutes “terrorism” under this new law, the closest glean into it would be the amendments inserted into the Mainland’s criminal law provisions, which states that “whoever propagates terrorism or extremism by way of preparing or distributing books, audio, and video materials or other items that propagate terrorism or extremism or by way of teaching or releasing information” shall be dealt with longer prison sentences.

Here’s my questions: if this same doctrine applies to the National Security Law, who defines terrorism? What is extremism’s official denotation? Are novels illustrating power struggles, such Animal Farm or Lés Miserables, considered “terroristic?” Which song genres, or songs themselves, would fall under this category? Who are the probable suspects — an activist leader, an academic, or even an ordinary citizen who just happened to read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World?

If the answer for the first two items is “China’s ruling party,” regardless of whatever the answers would be in the last three items, Hong Kong can truly kiss its freedoms and civil liberties goodbye. Lest we forget, China is touted to have transmogrified its ancient walls into the Great Firewall of China, since it blocks social media sites such as Facebook, Google, Orwell’s classic fable, and even searches about June 4, 1989 or Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong. That firewall might now be extended across Hong Kong’s borders.

Moreover, this national security plans to expand the scope of subversion’s definition; under this proposal, the prohibition would extend to actions “against state power” — which, for Hong Kong University law professor Albert Chen, might be a euphemism for the Chinese Communist Party.

Under this vague definition, a whole range of activities — from peaceful assemblies to militant protest actions — organized to protest and push back on Beijing will now be considered “subversive,” a tag that will now stipulate arrest and a quick trial.

That’s the dystopian future Hong Kong is now facing — with Emperor Xi as the Big Brother.

And some of these fears are not even far-fetched: several months after the series of protests in Hong Kong’s Central District, dubbed as the Occupy Central movement, fizzled out, several booksellers identified with a bookstore carrying out titles that are critical of the Chinese Communist Party were reported to have vanished. In the latest slew of protests fighting the passage of another legislation emblematic of China’s totalitarian bent — the National Anthem Bill — Hong Kong’s police do not think twice about unleashing state-sponsored terrorism on to the civilians: 360 protesters were arrested during the day-long protests and stand-off yesterday.

Since China’s regime can already do these devious acts even without the benefit of a draconian law supposedly vanquishing the scourge of terrorism, what stops it now anymore— when a law they’ve pushed for practically gives them more legal underpinnings for further abuses against the fibers of Hong Kong’s democracy?

The perils of this law is no different from the extradition bill proposed in Hong Kong last year. As Hong Kong-based journalist Mike Ives noted in his New York Times explainer, “the [extradition] bill would allow Hong Kong to detain and transfer people wanted in countries and territories with which it has no formal extradition agreements, including Taiwan and the Chinese mainland.” With this new legislation, the extradition of suspects to China for trial becomes flawlessly legal and justified — in the ruling party’s view.

A crackdown on the opposition and protest movements in Hong Kong directed on Beijing’s ruling regime would be the first likely whiplash of the law. But with the scope of China’s imperialism long before the coronavirus struck, it’s impossible that China’s export of totalitarianism and aggressive actions would remain in the shores of the financial hub that is Hong Kong.

For instance, Vietnam stands it ground — as it did during the American-led Vietnam War in mid-1960s — against Chinese ships attempting to cross its border. Taiwan, too, has stood its ground against China — and has now even prepared measures to aid Hong Kong activists who would want to flee the city-state once Beijing gains further control of it.

In the Philippines, however, it’s a different tale altogether.

This is where the future appears ghastly.

Fuhrer Rodrigo Duterte and China’s regime have a similar notion when it comes to human rights: only for those who exude unquestioning servility to the powers-that-be. With even the slightest crack in that manufactured deference to authority, the State can easily eliminate deviants, accuse them of miscreant behavior to rationalize their persecution, and haul them off to oblivion — since they’re not part of the demographic whose rights the State will recognize.

The most frightening part? Both Duterte and Xi would do anything and everything to coerce everybody else into bending to their own wicked will — by force, by ruse, or by legal gobbledygook.

Coinciding with the passage of the National Security Law, the country’s House of Representatives is now bent on continuing the deliberations for the anti-terror measure that this regime lobbies for, long after the pandemic and Duterte’s subsequent lockdowns suspended the hearings for the bill.

The Duterte regime’s Anti-Terror Bill of 2020 isn’t any stranger to China’s style. Though the supposed nature of the bill is to combat terrorism, the social menace that particularly bedevils the island of Mindanao, Duterte’s bailiwick, the provisions were — akin to Hong Kong’s national security law — too broad, too vague in scope and definition that authorities hell-bent on silencing the Fuhrer’s critics and activists can swiftly twist it against the persecuted’s will.

Take, for instance, the proposed law’s definition of terrorism.

In Senate Bill 1083, the version of the measure passed in the Senate last February — a day after the 34th year anniversary of Ferdinand Marcos’ downfall — terrorism is defined as an act “committed by any person” whose supposed purposes include the following:

1. To intimidate the general public and create an “atmosphere of fear”;
2. Provoke or influence by intimidation the government;
3. Seriously destabilize or destroy the fundamental social, political, or economic structures of the country; or
4. Create a national emergency or seriously undermine public safety.

Take a close look at the choice of words. Under this law’s provisions, the likelihood of (mis)interpretation is broad: even a peaceful assembly which criticizes or opposes the Duterte government can be infiltrated, agitated, and thrown into the realm of a riotous protest, so it can be considered a terrorist act warranting the arrest of its organizers and participants.

In a nutshell, anything that connotes force, protest, or even violence — even in a miniscule form , and if goaded by police and soldiers themselves in a hostile confrontation — will now be considered “terrorism.” The ambiguity over this definition makes the whole bill itself a dangerous march toward institutionalized fascism.

Go further into the measure and these provisions themselves should scare the daylights out of freedom-loving citizens:

1. Recruitment includes acts of encouraging people to enlist themselves in terrorist organizations or individuals, as proscribed either by the law or the United Nations Security Council.
2. Terrorist organizations refer to organizations that would be tagged as engaging in “terrorism.”
3. Threat to commit terrorism is defines as a person who “threaten[s] to commit any of the acts mentioned in Section 4.”
4. Planning, Training, Preparing, and Facilitating the Commission of Terrorism will include people whose interactions constitute a plan, preparation, or facilitation of an alleged terrorist act — even “collecting or making documents connected with the preparation of terrorism.”
5. Conspiracy to Commit Terrorism is penalized with reclusion perpetua or life imprisonment. (Who determines if an individual conspires to do terrorist acts, in the first place?)
6. Inciting to Commit Terrorism includes an individual allegedly inspiring a terrorist act through speeches, proclamations, writings, emblems, banners, or “other representations.”
7. Recruitment to and Membership in a Terrorist Organization is also punishable with reclusion perpetua. (Which agency outside UN declares that a certain organization is considered terrorist?)
8. Under Section 16, the secret wire-tapping, interception, or surveillance of alleged terrorists through any form of device or equipment by law enforcement agencies is allowed upon a supposed written order from the Court of Appeals.

The worst thing about this bill? Any suspect can be held incommunicado in an undisclosed location or “safe house” from three days until almost two months, with an extension of ten days permissible under the measure. Can anyone imagine what forms of torture can be repetitiously done on a “suspect” within that time frame? Not even Marcos’ dreaded torture chambers held tormented suspects for any longer than three days.

Certainly, the bill tackles “terrorism.” And we have a visual stimuli of what terrorism looks like. But that’s not a relief: with the aforementioned ambiguous delineations included in the proposed law on what is terrorism, what constitutes terrorist acts, and other pertinent factors that could lead to a warrantless arrest, anybody and anything can become a target — a student of Humanities and Social Sciences reading Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto (which the State may consider a terrorist propaganda), a liberal arts professor reciting Pete Lacaba’s iconic Prometheus Unbound protest poem, a Facebook user who posted a hilarious meme satirizing NCRPO chief Debold Sinas, an activist whose organization is terror-tagged, and even non-government organizations (NGOs) and humanitarian groups who will be accused of supplying material help to “terrorists.”

Quezon City representative Kit Belmonte actually raised this likelihood in one of the hearings in the House regarding the law, saying that “[a]ny member, a student who wants to join a political organization, who wants to discuss Marxism, Leninism, Friedrich Nietzsche, and his concept of Übermensch, or the superman, is suspect.” Since the State has the power or authority to loosely interpret even the carefully written provisions of the law, the risks and stakes are still too high.

Once it takes effect, Duterte’s anti-terror law, like China’s National Security Law, will not directly address or face off terrorism . Instead, it will clamp down on the people’s dissent and civil liberties. These laws will diminish, cripple down, and even infringe upon the people’s right to free speech, freedom of expression, the right to organize, academic freedom, freedom of the press, and even an individual’s freedom of thought. In effect, the law will serve as the regime’s indirect Thought Police — another representation from Orwellian dystopia — who will dangle over the populace the threat of longer imprisonment, under the arcane guise of anti-terrorism, if they do not back down from actions perceived to be “terrorist.”

It does not take a genius to foresee this predicament.

Without a doubt, these scare tactics on a restive populace from Duterte’s Malacañang is straight out of China’s totalitarian playbook. More infuriating is the uncanny coincidence that, in the same week, both China’s passage of a dangerous security law and the Duterte-controlled House of Representatives’ decision to continue deliberations on an equally perilous law occurred. It’s a harbinger of the worst that could spring up in the coming days — all the while a pandemic subdues the world to its knees.

(In some weird way, the pandemic can be a driving force that can thwart these evil actions. But the pandemic itself is disastrous to all of us. It’s perhaps a matter of whether the crisis’ depreciating aftereffects would force Beijing, and even Duterte, to roll back their carpets of fascism — or would embolden them any further to exploit the pandemic as an excuse to impose their dictatorships within an indefinite period of time.)

In this context, the worst Frankenstein out of these separate tyrannical laboratories jumps out: the very close relations of Duterte and China’s Xi. The President exceeded the level of past presidents’ servile attitude toward the United States with his authentic, disgusting, and condemnable banner of subservience to China: it doesn’t only cover concessions, but include outright proclamations about his “love” for Xi, his admiration for China’s de facto Emperor, and his evident #ChinaFirst policy of placing greater emphasis and priority on China’s welfare in exchange for meager largesse — a facet of Duterte’s rule that the coronavirus itself had heavily exposed in its barest forms.

What these interjections tell me is one thing: with this kind of interrelated contexts and coincidences, it’s now not a stretch of an imaginative mind to presage that what China does now to Hong Kong will be no more than the Philippines’ own similar fate in the near future, as a new (and self-anointed) “province of China.”

Political scientist and philosopher Hannah Arendt, the eminent thinker whose introduction to a form of government called totalitarian remain to be influential in the age of Xi Jinping, foresaw this kind of attitude prevalent in states where totalitarian fervor exists. In The Origins of Totalitarianism’s ninth chapter, Arendt wrote: “The whole question of human rights, therefore, was quickly and inextricably blended with the question of national emancipation; only the emancipated sovereignty of the people, of one’s own people, seemed to be able to insure them.”

Taking off from Arendt’s words, since our government has technically enslaved itself to China’s regime, it’s also not preposterous to say that our human rights policies are not only filched out of China’s playbook — it IS actually patterned after the Chinese model of totalitarianism.

It’s only a matter of time before Beijing’s totalitarian package arrives at our doorsteps, eager to unleash its fury upon a people where the majority, at least according to the Social Weather Station, still submits themselves to a China-backed dictator.

Ditto with Emperor Xi, Fuhrer Duterte would not hesitate to use violent force and deception to enforce their unconscionable worldviews. Rather than serve as a guiding idea for policymakihg, human rights takes the back seat under Xi’s China and Duterte’s Philippines.

Like master, like slave indeed. Hegel might be appeased.

No wonder, Duterte’s tyrannical blueprint on quashing and muzzling dissent is a certified Made in China product — even as the United States bankrolls Duterte’s murderous counter-insurgency operation, Oplan Kapanatagan.

The sole enigma left in the puzzle is this: as did the courageous people of Hong Kong, will we rise to the occasion and resist this totalitarian specter before it’s too late to even nudge?