Wednesday, 3 March 2021

Researchers Voice Rights Concerns Over Emotion Recognition Technology

Emotion recognition technology is being marketed globally as the next frontier of facial recognition, with proponents claiming it particularly well-suited for two starkly different environments: schools and prisons. In the Chinese context, companies have explicitly attached themselves to nationwide surveillance schemes such as the Sharp Eyes program, which aims to conduct real-time surveillance of vast swaths of China using high-tech surveillance cameras, facial recognition technology, and algorithmic modeling. In January 2021, British human rights organization Article 19 published a research paper by Vidushi Marda and Shazeda Ahmed on emotion recognition technology in China and the threat its adoption poses to the freedoms of expression, privacy, and the right to protest. The report also highlighted the deleterious effects of using the technology in the classroom:

[…] At Hangzhou No. 11, which claims to have only tested the Hikvision Smart Classroom Behaviour Management System on two tenth-grade classes, some students were afraid when their teachers demonstrated the technology. While one student’s fear was grounded in her understanding of how powerful Hikvision’s high-resolution surveillance cameras are, others worried about being academically penalised if any of their movements were recorded as unfocused. “Ever since the ‘smart eyes’ have been installed in the classroom, I haven’t dared to be absent-minded in class,” reflected one student at Hangzhou No. 11. This narrative can fuel belief in the power of a technology that potentially exceeds what it is being used for; one student at Niulanshan First Secondary School in Beijing was anxious that data about the moments when he is inattentive in class could be shared with universities he wants to attend.

Examples of behaviour changes in students bear out a concern that Chinese academics have regarding emotion recognition; namely, that students will develop ‘performative personalities’ (表演型人格), feigning interest in class if this becomes another metric on which their academic abilities are judged. Some students found staring straight ahead was the key to convincing the system they were focused. Experts who agree that the cameras elicit this performative instinct, however, are not in agreement about how to respond. Shanghai Jiaotong University professor Xiong Bingqi castigates the cameras as a “very bad influence on students’ development[… that] takes advantage of students” and should be removed. He Shanyun, an associate professor of education at Zhejiang University, believes the ‘role-playing’ effect could be mitigated if classroom applications of emotion recognition are not tied to rewards and disciplinary measures against students, and are only used for follow-up analysis of students’ learning progress. Shanghai University of Finance and Economics law professor, Hu Ling, emphasised that schools needed to do the work to convince parents and students that the technology was not being used to assess academic performance. Yet, to place the onus for seeking consent on the school alone absolves the companies of responsibility. [Source]

One of the authors of the study told Reuters, “We believe that their design, development, deployment, sale and transfers should be banned due to the racist foundations and fundamental incompatibility with human rights.” The application of this technology in the classroom comes with similar problems similarly problematic, a point Chinese web users made en masse to a 2019 article on AI behavioral analysis being implemented in a Shanghai classroom.

At Rest of World, Meaghan Tobin and Louise Matsakis argued that emotion recognition technology is not only useless in the classroom, but that it may also be harmful:

“In the competitive Chinese educational environment, it’s easy for companies to pander to parents’ anxieties about their children’s success,” said Ahmed. School administrators may also see the technology as a way to attract state funding and produce educational improvements overnight. In places like the United States and India, facial and emotion recognition tools have been used in schools for safety and to boost attendance.

The Article 19 report documents a range of Chinese companies that offer emotion recognition for education, including tech giants like Lenovo. One firm claimed to have built an interface for teachers that displays “problem student warnings,” which flag emotions like sadness or fear. The program combines emotion recognition with academic performance to categorize students according to different archetypes. The “falsely earnest type,” for instance, is someone who listens in lectures but gets bad grades.

[…] Yong Zhao, an education professor at the University of Kansas, cautioned that not only can these technologies amplify students’ anxieties, they’re also highly fallible. “We don’t know yet how good the algorithm is,” said Zhao. “Can you really capture all students’ emotional patterns? What does it really mean to be paying attention?” [Source]

At The Guardian, Michael Standaert reported on Shenzhen-based Taigusys, one of the emotion recognition technology companies mentioned in the Article 19 report, that claims its technology can stop violence in prisons:

“Violence and suicide are very common in detention centres,” says Chen. “Even if police nowadays don’t beat prisoners, they often try to wear them down by not allowing them to fall asleep. As a result, some prisoners will have a mental breakdown and seek to kill themselves. And our system will help prevent that from happening.”

[…] Chen, while aware of the concerns, played up the system’s potential to stop violent incidents. He cites an incident where a security guard stabbed about 41 people in the province of Guangxi in southern China last June, claiming it was technologically preventable.

[…] “This is a familiar and slightly frustrating narrative that we see used frequently when newer, ‘shiny’ technologies are introduced under the umbrella of safety or security, but in reality video surveillance has little nexus to safety, and I’m not sure how they thought that feedback in real time would fix violence,” Marda told the Guardian. [Source]

Parents in China are understandably anxious about their children’s education, particularly their college entrance examination results. A recent graphic published by The Economist found a direct correlation between a student’s gaokao score and their mean monthly salary in a first job.

Despite recent government efforts to make the exam and education system more egalitarian in recent years, vast differences in the quality of education between rural and urban areas mean that rural students are left behind even in high performing schools. Cheating scandals have further shaken faith in the system. In 2020, a Southern Metropolis Daily investigation found that 242 students in Shandong Province had their gaokao score stolen by undeserving but well-connected imposters. Rural students aren’t the only ones left behind by China’s education system. At The Economist, David Rennie wrote that blind students are, in practice, barred from taking the gaokao, unfairly excluding them from China’s best universities:

[…] In 2014 China announced that blind students would be allowed to take the national university entrance examination, the fearsome gaokao. This breakthrough followed years of official foot-dragging. In 2015 almost 9.5m candidates took the exam. Just eight students took a special version in Braille or large print. No official count of blind school-pupils exists in China. But if the proportion of American youngsters with legally registered visual handicaps is taken as a guide, as many as 80,000 of those taking the gaokao each year should be blind.

Alas, this also remains a frustrating moment to be blind and Chinese. Of 10.7m students who sat the gaokao this summer, just five took the Braille papers for the blind. Since 2015 candidate numbers have never exceeded ten in a single year, leading some Chinese to grumble about “wasting national resources” on the Braille gaokao, says Mr Cai. That ignores other hurdles still to be dismantled, he argues, noting that only about 30 Chinese universities admit blind students, and that even some of those fail to offer accessible tests and textbooks on a systematic basis. Other universities exclude the blind with medical tests and other gambits. Education officials do see a need to look after the disabled, he says. The problem is low expectations, and an attitude towards the blind and others that “what we give you is what’s best for you”. Doctors play a role in making families timid, too, says Mr Cai, who lost his sight at ten. Once they decide a progressive disability cannot be cured, they too often abandon hope and counsel risk-avoidance.

Nonetheless a handful of blind students manage to stay in the mainstream school system and achieve gaokao scores that entitle them to apply for elite colleges, a feat that reflects luck, talent but also years of grinding toil. One such student, Ang Ziyu, a serious youth from the inland city of Hefei, is attending the Shanghai training course. He must wait until late August to learn if his score of 635 is enough to enter Beijing Normal University, a teacher-training school. He expects no special allowance to be made for years of having schoolwork read to him by his parents, or the trickiness of taking the gaokao in Braille, a tactile form of printing that is ill-suited to transliterating Chinese characters. Mr Ang currently leans towards teaching at a blind school after graduation. But he has heard that attending college often leaves students eager to explore new possibilities. “I feel like that, too,” he says shyly. [Source]



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Tuesday, 2 March 2021

New Details Emerge from Xinjiang Camps Amid Government Efforts to Discredit Victims

As a campaign of mass internment of Uyghurs in northwest China seemingly begins to transition into a new stage involving forced labor and population transfers, details of the detainees’ experiences continue to emerge. In early February, a BBC investigation uncovered evidence of systematic rape in the camps, “the-situation-that-must-not-be-mentioned” in the words of Weibo users trying to avoid censors’ gazes. At The New Yorker, a visual essay written by Ben Mauk, with artwork by Matt Huynh, drew on extensive interviews to provide deeply personal testimony on life in Xinjiang during the campaign, both inside and outside of the camps:

Sholpan Amirken, a hairdresser from northern Xinjiang who married into a prominent religious family, told me that after several of her husband’s relatives were detained in 2017, a male Han cadre came to stay at her house. He advised Amirken and her husband, both of whom are Kazakh, to dispose of books written in Arabic, so she burned them. He also ordered her to take down wall ornaments with Kazakh phrases—“May Allah Bless You,” “May the Roof of Your House Be High”—along with embroideries of mosques. The cadre visited for days or weeks at a time, she said, always bringing luggage and sleeping in the main house. Amirken was nervous around the cadre, who came even when her husband, a long-haul truck driver, like Otarbai, was away. She began to sleep in a guest house. “We considered him a spy,” she said.

[…] Before she spoke, Aynur stood by herself under a large flagpole while the Chinese flag was raised. Then she explained that, because she was unable to control her husband, he had become involved with terrorists, and that this was why he was living in the camp a few miles down the road, with around five thousand other detainees. When Aynur finished, others rose to give speeches praising the Party. Although she had given brief confessions at previous ceremonies, she’d never been forced to call her husband a terrorist. Afterward, relatives in her village started avoiding her. Former colleagues from her old school stopped saying hello when they saw her on the street. “I felt like a criminal in front of all those people,” she said. “It was not a good feeling.”

[…] Firsthand descriptions of criminal trials in Xinjiang are rare. Amirken, the Kazakh hairdresser who married into a prominent religious family, told me that she attended the trial of her brother-in-law, Nurlan Pioner, an imam in the Altai Mountains near Mongolia. For years, Pioner had avoided trouble with authorities. He received training and a certificate from the state-run madrasa in Ürümqi and worked closely with Party officials, who approved his Friday-night sermons and his scholarly work translating religious books from Arabic into Kazakh. Nevertheless, Pioner was detained in June, 2017, and put on trial a year later. His family received a twenty-three-page prewritten judgment of his case. When the proceedings began, two guards with rifles carried Pioner into the courtroom in a chair. The accused was wearing a blue prison uniform that was soiled with urine. He appeared malnourished and was unable to walk; he spoke incoherently. The judge read the prewritten verdict. It said that Pioner was arrested for “gathering a crowd to instigate social disorder; taking advantage of extremism to hold back law enforcement; [and] illegally obtaining materials which propagate [an] extremist ideology.” He was sentenced to seventeen years in prison. According to researchers, Pioner’s case reflected the criminalization of religious practice in Xinjiang. [Source]

Uyghurs in Xinjiang are subject to utterly arbitrary detention. At The University of British Columbia’s Xinjiang Documentation Project, Darren Byler translated and annotated a 2017 document titled “Learning and Identifying 75 Religious Extreme Activities in Parts of Xinjiang.” People found to have exhibited any of the behaviors on the list are at risk for internment in Xinjiang, no matter how innocuous or ill-defined the “infraction”:

18. Preventing children from learning Chinese, defaming “bilingual” education, damaging textbooks and the great portraits [This refers to portraits of Communist Party leaders such as Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping] and so on.

[…] 21. Having real estate, estate, land, livestock that does not reflect the means of production of the individual. Signs that the family is leaving their place of origin or place of resident, or they have suddenly moved out of their place of household registration for no reason.

[…] 36. At extremist wedding ceremonies attendees are forbidden to drink, smoke, dance, and sing. During funerals, men are not allowed to wear white belts, women cannot wear white headscarves or black headscarves; verses recited at the time of burial are changed to tablighs or teachings that focus on “strengthening Islamic beliefs.” Crying is not allowed. Wailing is not allowed. [Source]

In December 2020, a Buzzfeed report found evidence of newly constructed factories attached to previously documented detention facilities. Other reports have detailed systemic use of forced labor in Xinjiang’s cotton and tomato industries, implicating global supply chains. Earlier in 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute published a report documenting the “sale” of Uyghur laborers to factories outside of Xinjiang. At The BBC this week, John Sudworth further documented coerced transfers of Uyghur workers out of Southern Xinjiang into factories across central and eastern China and a research report that analyzed the program:

“The other thing it shows is this ulterior motive,” she said, “that although the narrative is one of lifting people out of poverty, there’s a drive to entirely change people’s lives, to separate families, disperse the population, change their language, their culture, their family structures, which is more likely to increase poverty than to decrease it.”

[…] Written by a group of academics from Nankai University in the Chinese city of Tianjin, [an in-depth Chinese study of Xinjiang’s job-transfer scheme circulated to senior Chinese officials] concludes that the mass labour transfers are “an important method to influence, meld and assimilate Uighur minorities” and bring about a “transformation of their thinking.”

[…] His analysis includes a legal opinion from Erin Farrell Rosenberg, a former senior advisor to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, that the Nankai Report provides “credible grounds” for the crimes against humanity of forcible transfer and persecution.

At The Globe and Mail, Nathan VanderKlippe reported that Uyghur participants in the program must first undergo ideological training and are not free to leave:

Workers can be transferred only after passing “strict political examination and screening,” the researchers report, noting that training programs can adopt “semi-closed and military-style” methods. Once relocated, labourers are guaranteed the right to leave and return, the document says. But when they travel by train, they must be accompanied by security guards.

[…]But life is also constrained for workers from Xinjiang, said the owner of a halal restaurant near the Hengfa factory. Workers who sign contracts for a year, for example, “are only free to leave after they finish the one-year period,” the restaurateur said. Though they can walk to nearby shops on their days off, “they can’t go into the city,” he said. “They are not allowed to.”

[…] Some instruction is delivered by local communities, some by companies themselves. Hubei province alone has established 78 training sites and 57 corporate classrooms where people from Xinjiang receive linguistic and political training. Such education can ease integration into other parts of China. But language classes have also been used to deliver political education, with a textbook called Love the Motherland, Love Hubei, Love the Neighbourhood. With 110 instructors, the program seeks to “co-ordinate the promotion of language training and patriotism, ethnic unity and education in rule of law.” [Source]

The BBC report is based in part on a study published by China’s Nankai University first discovered by Muyi Xiao of the New York Times and shared on Matters. At The Jamestown Foundation, Adrien Zenz published a detailed evaluation of the report, and explained how forced population transfers are part and parcel of state-led attempts to erase Uyghur identity:

However, the Report also makes it clear that poverty alleviation through labor transfer is a means to a more troubling end. First, it bluntly states that the state took the “drastic short-term measure” of placing many Uyghurs into “Education and Training Centers” (a euphemism for re-education camps). Second, it notes that labor transfers represent a long-term measure to promote “assimilation” and “reduce Uyghur population density”. The Report recommends that this program should be “initiated quietly” with “no need to overly publicize this internationally.”

Elsewhere, Chinese academic publications describe labor transfers as a crucial means to “crack open the solidified [Uyghur] society” and to mitigate the negative impact of religion. They say that lax family planning policies produced a “severely excessive” number of Uyghur surplus laborers that now constitute a “latent threat to the current regime.”

Overall, the evidence shows that labor transfers constitute intentional displacements of populations deemed “problematic” by the government. This is complemented by two previously unreported campaigns: a) a large-scale transfer scheme by which hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority farmers and pastoralists transfer usage rights to their land or herds to state-run collectives for the purpose of “liberating” them to become industrial laborers; and b) a campaign to settle 300,000 additional Han Chinese settlers in Uyghur heartland regions by 2022 in order to “optimize southern Xinjiang’s population structure.” [Source]

After first denying the existence of mass detentions in 2018, the Chinese government began claiming they were solely “vocational education and training centers.” Now, the central government denies all reports of forced labor, sterilization, and systematic rape. Global Times called the accusations “the delusion of the rumormongers.” The government has even initiated coordinated attacks on those providing witness to events in Xinjiang. The government has produced videos purporting to show Uyghur activists’ family members attacking them as “liars” in a campaign to discredit them. At Reuters, Cate Cadell investigated the Chinese state’s systematic attempt to discredit Uyghur women who share their recollections of the camps:

Chinese officials have named women, disclosed what they say is private medical data and information on the women’s fertility, and accused some of having affairs and one of having a sexually transmitted disease. The officials said the information was evidence of bad character, invalidating the women’s accounts of abuse in Xinjiang.

“The fact that there are so many women in the camps … who don’t have the faintest appearance of being violent people, this just shows how this has nothing to do with terrorism,” [said James Millward, a professor of Chinese history at Georgetown University and expert in Xinjiang policy.]

[…] During a regular daily press briefing last week, foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin held up images of witnesses who had described sexual abuse in Xinjiang. The account of one of them, he said, was “lies and rumours” because she had not recounted the experience in previous interviews. He gave medical details about the woman’s fertility. [Source]

In order to escape persecution, some Uyghurs have attempted to escape Xinjiang through perilous routes that often lead to Turkey. Yet due to the Turkish state’s increasingly cozy relationship with Beijing, asylum seekers may no longer be safe from Chinese extradition requests. Despite U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s assertion that China’s actions in Xinjiang amount to genocide, the United States government has not offered special status to Uyghur refugees.



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/03/new-details-emerge-from-xinjiang-camps-amid-government-efforts-to-discredit-victims/
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How the HK47 Prepared for Charges Under the National Security Law, and International Reactions

On Sunday, February 28, 47 prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activists were charged with subversion under the Hong Kong National Security Law. The charges were widely expected after the activists were first arrested in a massive sweep in January 2021. After initially being released on bail after their arrests, they were notified on Friday, February 26th to report to police stations across the city at 2pm on Sunday, giving them just days to prepare.

On social media and with local media outlets, the 47 documented their last days of freedom and their final messages to the public.

On Sunday, February 28th, Stand News published a video after following nine activists in their final last days preparing for prison:

Translator Karen Tse summarized on Twitter how the nine made their preparations:

Lee Chi-yung, who received just 301 votes in the primary election, was one of eight people arrested in January who were not charged on Sunday. 

A number of activists, including Lester Shum and Sam Cheung, rushed to get married following their arrests in January.

Speaking to local magazine Hong Kong Feature, Shum explained why he and his spouse accelerated their wedding plans. Translated by CDT:

“Our plan for the worst case scenario is, if I’m extradited to China, the difference between ‘wife’ and ‘girlfriend’ is significant, because in the case of the Hong Kong 12, the situation for some girlfriends was somewhat uncertain; only immediate family members had special rights.” He said that the function of sharing a surname was one consideration in getting married, but it certainly wasn’t the most important reason. “I actually didn’t want that to be the reason to get married.” Lester held a beer can in his hand, and squeezed it for a second. Nicole was sitting not far away, her left hand touching her cheek, her right hand petting the cat, listening to her newlywed husband’s reasoning.

“I think, if it’s meant to be, it’ll happen, if it isn’t, then it won’t. If you feel you can’t commit, then don’t hold them up, there just isn’t that kind of time to waste.” […] The important thing, he said three times, is: no matter how high the wall, even if it gets in the way our bodies, it cannot get in the way of our earnestness. The courage of two people to run towards each other, after January 6th [when 55 pro-democracy figures were first arrested], was even clearer.

“I think, in the face of totalitarianism, there’s much less room to be a ‘scumbag’,” he said. The two then looked at each other, and laughed. [Source]

Other activists left messages on their Facebook pages, or spoke to the media before entering police stations.

Western governments and human rights organizations around the world have condemned the charges against the 47. On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch denounced the charges, calling the National Security Law “abusive”:

Hong Kong should drop the charges against the 47, part of Beijing’s escalating campaign to end competitive elections in Hong Kong and its crackdown on the territory’s freedoms.

“The Hong Kong authorities are using the Beijing-imposed National Security Law to wrongfully charge 47 people who sought peaceful change through the democratic process,” said Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Chinese government is showing Hong Kong and the world that it stands in direct opposition to human rights and democracy.” [Source]

The Guardian’s Helen Davidson reported on condemnation from the E.U., U.K., and U.S.: 

Sunday’s charges drew international condemnation and calls for the release of the detainees. The European Union said the charges made clear that “legitimate political pluralism will no longer be tolerated in Hong Kong”.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, condemned the charges. “Political participation and freedom of expression should not be crimes. The US stands with the people of Hong Kong,” he said.

On Sunday, the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, described the charges as “deeply disturbing”. [Source]

Local public broadcaster RTHK reported that Hong Kong’s Department of Justice hit back against the criticism on Tuesday:

The department said open demands for the immediate release of defendants also undermine the rule of law.

It is “seen as an attempt to meddle in Hong Kong’s affairs which are internal affairs of the People’s Republic of China.”

The department also said the National Security Law expressly provides that human rights, such as freedom of speech and assembly, are protected. It also provides that legal principles such as presumption of innocence be respected and observed, it said. [Source]

Since Monday, the 47 defendants have had to sit through a marathon bail hearing, which enters into its third consecutive day on Wednesday. Defendants have had to contend with minimal food and sleep, exhaustion, and poor hygiene since they were remanded in custody on Sunday. South China Morning Post’s Brian Wong and Nadia Lam reported on the court proceedings on Tuesday, which defense counsel described as “sheer torment”:

Tsui said the male defendants, for instance, were taken from court at 5am before reaching Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre one hour later, but they left there again at 8am as prison officers brought them back to the dock.

“To my clients, this is sheer torment,” the lawyer said.

Defendant Lawrence Lau Wai-chung, a barrister who has appeared for the defence in various protest-related proceedings, apologised when he made an oral submission on his own bail application: “I am very sorry for my shabby clothes and messy appearance, as I have not bathed, washed my head and changed my clothes for three days.”

He added: “I came to realise that in depriving one’s freedom, they are also deprived of their personal hygiene, their looks and their self-confidence.” [Source]



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/03/how-the-hk47-prepared-for-charges-under-the-national-security-law-and-international-reactions/
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Photo: 2 the Wood, by Gauthier DELECROIX – 郭天

2 the Wood, by Gauthier DELECROIX – 郭天 (CC BY 2.0)



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Monday, 1 March 2021

CDT Weekly: How to Read It From Now On

The third edition of CDT’s weekly email newsletter was published on Friday, and covers the launch of our new Chinese-language Sensitive Words calendar, China’s probably coincidental ban on Taiwanese pineapple, "incorrect collective memories" of the Wuhan lockdown one year on, the steadily constricting environment for online speech and other expression, and more. Each week, the newsletter aims to provide an overview of new content across CDT’s English and Chinese sites, as well as the bilingual China Digital Space wiki, and related content elsewhere.

To help launch CDT Weekly, the first two editions were also published on CDT, and therefore included in our daily email newsletters. From now on, though, the weekly email will be available only through Substack. Sign up for a free subscription or read the current and previous editions online at chinadigitaltimes.substack.com.



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Hong Kong Prosecutors Charge 47 With Subversion, Supporters Rally Outside Bail Hearing

In an orchestrated spectacle seemingly timed to coordinate with leaders in Beijing, 47 prominent pro-democracy supporters—including very nearly every member of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp—were crammed into a West Kowloon courtroom on Monday, March 1 for a bail hearing. They were charged the day prior with subversion under the Hong Kong National Security Law (NSL) for running in an informal primary election in July 2020, in which more than 600,000 Hong Kong people voted. If ultimately convicted, they face up to life in prison.

After adjourning for several hours when it emerged that multiple defendants were denied access to their lawyers, Monday’s hearing continued for more than ten hours without reaching a conclusion. Just before 2 a.m. it was adjourned for nine hours after one defendant fainted, and three more were sent to the emergency room after collapsing shortly afterwards. The last prison transport trucks left the courthouse at 5 a.m., taking the defendants back to jail until the hearing resumes at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, March 2.

At the South China Morning Post, Chris Lau and Brian Wong reported on demonstrations by supporters wearing black—a symbol of the 2019 protest movement—outside the courtroom during the hearing, and on defense lawyers’ accusations of prosecutors’ “draconian” handling of the case:

While asking the court to hold the 47 defendants in custody, prosecutors revealed that they needed at least three extra months for police inquiries, and could not say when those investigations would be completed.

That drew a backlash from the other side of the bench, as defence lawyers called prosecutors’ handling of the case “draconian” and raised concerns that their clients could end up staying years behind bars even before the actual trial could begin.

[…] The hearing drew hundreds of supporters in defiance of Covid-19 social-distancing rules that limit public gatherings to four people at a time.

[…] The supporters displayed banners demanding the “release of all political prisoners”, and chanted familiar slogans such as “Liberate Hong Kong; revolution of our times” – a protest movement mantra which has since been deemed illegal under the national security law. […] [Source]

The 47 are not expected to be granted bail. A judgement in February by Hong Kong’s top court set an exceptionally high standard for bail for defendants charged with national security crimes, in effect reversing the favorable presumption of bail in ordinary cases and putting the onus on defendants to prove they would not commit further national security crimes. That expectation led many defendants to make exceptional and sweeping promises pending their trials. One by one, formerly outspoken activists promised to not merely remove themselves from politics, but to drastically censor their own speech, and even to pledge oaths of allegiance to Beijing.

The subversion charges against the 47 multiplies the tally of people charged under the NSL by seven. Financial Times’ Primrose Riordan and Nicolle Liu reported on the unprecedented scale of the charges in China’s modern history:

Bing Ling, a professor of Chinese law at the University of Sydney, said the last time so many people had been charged with subversion in China was probably in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen protests in Beijing. “It’s quite exceptional what has been done in Hong Kong even by Chinese standards,” Ling said.

“They do charge people with subversion from time to time, but 47 in one go — I don’t know of any incidents like this in the past 10 or 20 years.” [Source]

On the morning of Monday, March 1, prosecutors’ allegations against the defendants were formally disclosed. The defendants were charged with “advocating, engaging or participating in a scheme with a view to abusing his or her powers” to obtain a controlling majority in the Legislative Council with the goals of paralyzing it. Prosecutors noted that the legal process they deemed “conspiracy” was in fact based on enumerated procedures laid out in the Basic Law. CDT has previously written about legal experts’ doubts about the strength of prosecutors’ cases against the 47 defendants.

In the afternoon, a pro-Beijing magazine published in full a February 22 speech by Xia Baolong, the head of Beijing’s office in Hong Kong. Journalists and observers were quick to remark on the timing. In the speech, Xia singled out Jimmy Lai, Benny Tai, and Joshua Wong as individuals who needed to be “severely punished under the law.” Lai, who is in jail pending his own national security trial, has the official case number NSD RN 2000 0001. Prosecutors’ allegation document revealed that Tai is NSD RN 2000 0002.

 

Inside the courtroom, defendants tried to inject humor into the proceedings., and AFP’s Xinqi Su reported on moments of levity  during the morning’s adjournment. Speaking into a hot mic, former journalist Gwyneth Ho asked to sing a song by Hong Kong boy band Mirror. District Councillor Lester Shum urged people not to lose their aspirations, as ex-legislator Lam Cheuk-ting told his wife that he loved her.

Outside the courthouse, drama punctuated the day. By early morning, enough people to encircle the block had neatly formed a line, some with children in tow, for coveted tickets to watch the bail hearing. One ordinary citizen who snagged a ticket gifted it to a group of Western diplomats from six countries who were waiting in line. After deliberation, it was decided that the British consulate’s man would take the seat. Children at a primary school across the street yelled their support from a balcony, an apparent validation of the alleged revolutionary potential of 10 year-olds. A group of pro-Beijing counter-protestors waved banners for one hour, and then promptly left. Supporters’ shouts were reportedly so loud that their voices could be heard inside the courthouse. Police responded by announcing this as a violation of the NSL, and ordering them to disperse. After clearing the streets around the courthouse in the evening, they arrested a lawyer representing nine of the defendants who was holding legal documents as he tried to enter the court.

In the end, just 20 of 47 defendants had their submissions to the court completed on the first day of the bail hearing. But the events outside the courtroom show how, despite the interminable pace of the legal process in Hong Kong, broader mechanisms for dissent and free expression in the city are being stamped out at whirlwind speed. Proceedings are expected to resume at 11:30 a.m. on March 2.

Beyond this mass hearing, additional events marked the day of March 1. The high-profile trial of seven pro-democracy figures for illegal assembly, including Martin Lee, Margaret Ng, and Leung Kwok-hung, was adjourned since Leung was stuck at his other high-profile bail hearing on the other side of the harbor.

A day earlier as formal charges were levied, emotional scenes recorded what could be the last moments of freedom for many of the dozens first arrested in a massive pre-dawn raid in January. They had been ordered to report to police stations across the city at 2 p.m. Eight walked back out, including lawyer and American citizen John Clancey, but Phoebe Kong notes they “didn’t completely get off the hook” and were ordered to report back to police stations on May 4.

The significance of the timing of the charges has not been lost to many observers. Coming days before the “Two Sessions” convene in Beijing, where top leaders are expected to discuss Hong Kong and issue sweeping changes to its electoral rules. The arrestees were ordered to report to police stations on February 28, a day of infamy in Taiwan after KMT forces began killing thousands of anti-government protestors on that date in 1947, marking the beginning of the White Terror. Clancey highlighted the significance of May 4, the date he is required to report back to the police, as a celebrated day for change and democracy in China.

In the days leading up to the charges on March 1, arrestees spoke about the various ways they sorted their affairs and prepared for lives in detention. Anticipating being charged, several activists, including Lester Shum and Sam Cheung, recently married their partners. At the hearing on Monday, Cheung’s lawyers revealed that his wife was pregnant while pleading for the court to grant him bail. Many took to social media or spoke to reporters outside of police stations on Sunday to send last messages of encouragement to their supporters. The Guardian published translated final messages from many of the 47 that were shared on Twitter:

Eddie Chu Hoi-dick, 43, former LegCo member who resigned in protest in September 2020.
“Today, to be guilty of our common ideals, I am deeply honoured. I have received your well-wishes, and I wish everyone fulfilment each day. No matter the situation, fill everyone around you with love and with hope.”

Henry Wong Pak-yu, 39, district councillor.
“To have a clear conscience, is not to be agreeable, but to be good; to prevent misdeeds from happening.”

Jeremy Tam Man-ho, 45, Civic party member, former LegCo member who resigned with colleagues in November 2020.
“Go peacefully, and be upright – sometimes it’s hard to do both, and we can only work hard to practise the latter, and wish for peace in our hearts. History will stand on the side of justice, so sit straight, drink water, and dawn will eventually come.”

Gwyneth Ho Kwai-lam, 30, intended to run in the elections.
“Many people probably didn’t start thinking about exile until after [Nathan Law, politician and activist who was leader of Demosistō from 2016 to 2018, he later fled to the UK]. But for me, I knew by 7/1/19 that the cost of exile was more unbearable for me than anything else. So a decision that, to you, looks like caging a lion, to me, is a trade off that I am willing to bear. I want peace of mind more than peace, and the two are sometimes opposites. I wish that you all may find peace of mind, and then, to press forward.” [Source]

In a video titled “If today is the last day of freedom,” Stand News followed nine people in their last days as they prepared for prison (English closed captions available):

 

Separately, a senior civil servant appointed by the government to address “failures” at independent public broadcaster RTHK took office on Monday. Three senior journalists and producers resigned later that day, including the head of the public and current affairs division. At the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the CUHK student union cabinet, which received 98% of the student body’s votes, stepped down, after the university disavowed the union and banned it from campus, citing its political stance. Student representatives said their families had received death threats. CUHK’s administration said it had “absolute respect for academic freedom and freedom of speech.”



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/03/hong-kong-prosecutors-charge-47-with-subversion-supporters-rally-outside-bail-hearing/
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Photo: Untitled (Shanghai, February 2021), by Hsiuan Boyen

Photo: Untitled (Shanghai, 2021), by Hsiuan Boyen (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/03/photo-untitled-shanghai-february-2021-by-hsiuan-boyen/
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