The Hong Kong authorities refuse to provide details on six recent arrests under a national security law, fueling increasing concerns concerning government’s transparency because it tightens dissent controls.
Hong Kong Managing Director John Lee said on Tuesday that since the promulgation of the National Security Act in 2020, 332 people had been arrested. It was an increase of six arrests since the Secretary of Security Chris Tang said on June 1 that 326 people had been arrested under the law, with 165 convictions.
When the local media asked questions about the new arrests, the security office said that detailed failures of arrest figures are “classified information linked to the safeguard of national security in HKSAR and will therefore not be made public”. Hksar represents the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The political commentator, Sampson Wong, said that in the past, the government of Hong Kong rarely used national security as a reason to refuse information, and now the fundamental law of the public namely was damaged.
“At this stage, journalists can still detect some of these arrests, but how long will it last? In the future, will people be arrested without anyone knowing it? ” Wong asked.
“Everything could be called a violation of confidentiality. If this continues, the truth will be completely under the control of the national security authorities,” he said.
The National Security Act was adopted after pro-democracy massive demonstrations in 2019, while Beijing tightened controls in Hong Kong, which had known greater civic freedoms than continental China and greater government transparency, including by the police. China maintains that the 2020 law was required to maintain order.
Last month, the Hong Kong government bypassing the procedures of the Legislative Council and unilaterally adopted two new subsidiary laws under the national safeguarding order, which considerably widened the powers of the Beijing Bureau supervising national security in the city.
Under measures, it is prohibited to disclose or film the operations of the office; Civil servants must cooperate and support national security operations; And any act that obstructs national security agents for the exercise of their functions is criminalized.
Although it is not clear what arrests have taken place in the past two weeks, on June 2, the National Security Department arrested a man and four women for allegedly conspired by terrorist activities. The suspects would have used phones, emails and messaging applications to send messages threatening to bomb the central government offices and a sports park, while promoting professional independence messages for Taiwan and Hong Kong.
On June 6, the eminent defender of democracy Joshua Wong, who was already serving a four -year sentence and eight months for subversion, was officially arrested for an additional accusation of “conspiracy in order to end with foreign forces”.
Last week, the authorities also launched an investigation into national security in six anonymous people suspected of “collusion with a foreign country”. But the security office said that no arrest had yet been linked to this investigation.
Edited by Mat Pennington.