The Hong Konger Documentary Is a Lesson on Freedom By Jack Wolfsohn about 12 hours ago T
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-hong-konger-documentary-is-a-lesson-on-freedom/
The Acton Institute has released a new documentary called The Hong Konger: Jimmy Lai’s Extraordinary Struggle for Freedom. (National Review attended an exclusive screening of the film.) It sends an important message about the importance of preserving liberty and fighting tyranny.
The documentary tells the story of Hong Kong political activist Jimmy Lai. Lai left mainland China during the Maoist Revolution and fled to Hong Kong. There he founded Giordano, a clothing business that became hugely successful. A billionaire, Lai could have retired. However, fearing China’s predatory actions toward Hong Kong, he felt an obligation to engage in political activism on behalf of all Hong Kongers. Lai founded the pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily in 1995, which was shut down in 2021 by the Hong Kong government. In its heyday, Apple Daily was one of the most-read newspapers in Hong Kong. Today, Jimmy Lai is sitting in a Chinese prison.
Reverend Robert Sirico, president emeritus of the Acton Institute, said to the audience attending the screening, “Jimmy’s story is one that cannot and will not die in a prison cell. That is what we intend to demonstrate with this documentary.”
The documentary was deeply emotional and profoundly inspiring. It describes how Hong Kongers used to think of themselves as Chinese. However, after the Tiananmen Square Massacre, they began to see themselves as Hong Kongers. As the film explains, in 2014, Lai was arrested on charges of “illegal assembly” and then released. This was only a preview of what was to come.
Everything changed in Hong Kong in 2019. That was when the government proposed the extradition law, which would allow China to extradite criminals from Hong Kong and prosecute them in Chinese courts. Two million people – out of a population of 7.5 million – participated in massive demonstrations against the law. One sign displayed in the film read, “You can’t kill us all” in both Mandarin and English. Lai explained in the film that, as a result of the proposed law, “The younger generation and the older generation have never been so united.” In 2020, the Hong Kong government used Covid-19 as an excuse to deny people permits to protest. Eventually, the government rescinded the extradition bill.
However, in June 2020, the Chinese government approved the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. It set up special courts and special police to arrest anyone who was committing crimes related to supporting secession from China. Lai spoke in the film about the law, saying, “If we just surrender, we will lose everything.” That August, Lai was arrested in his home and marched through Apple Daily headquarters as a way of shaming him. He was released on bail. Then, in December, Lai was arrested again and charged under the national-security law. The police detained three other writers at Apple Daily, including the CEO and editor-in-chief. One resident of Hong Kong featured in the documentary said, “It felt like the end.”
The documentary mentioned Wall Street’s complicity in human-rights violations committed by China. Wall Street is so focused on making profits, the documentary points out, that it ignores blatant human-rights violations committed by the Chinese government against the Uyghurs, Tibetans, and the Hong Kongers. Yet, Wall Street continues to invest in China. Lai’s reaction to this greed was predictable: “Any company that will bow down to China . . . that will hurt the dignity of the American people.”
As of March 2022, Lai was in a prison cell in China awaiting trial. He currently sits in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison. Every morning, he is put in 35-pound shackles.
Sunny Cheung, a political activist who was forced to flee Hong Kong and was featured in the film, told the audience in a panel after the screening what can be done to help Hong Kong. “When you have the opportunity to change your country’s policies, please talk to your representatives. . . . We have to try everything we can to deter the [Chinese Communist Party].”
Following the film, Mark Clifford, president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, spread a message of hope, saying, “We strike fear into [the Chinese government’s] hearts because they know how hard it is to quench human freedom.”
At the end of the event, Clifford issued a warning about China’s imperialist actions: “It won’t stop in Taiwan. Totalitarianism is a cancer. It’s spreading.”
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