On April 9, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, warned that Europe should not become a “vassal”, and had to assert its “strategic autonomy”. It needed to be a “third power” in the world order, along with the US and China. He said the “worst of things” would be to “adapt ourselves to an American rhythm and a Chinese overreaction”.
Given their realism, Macron’s remarks inevitably grated with anti-China forces around the world, who duly disparaged him. In the US, the charge was led by Senator Marco Rubio, whose bigotry puts even the late senator Joe McCarthy in the shade. In Europe, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), which is pathologically hostile toward Beijing, told Macron his remarks were “ill-judged”, and “you do not speak for Europe”.
The IPAC statement was signed by some of Europe’s most notorious Sinophobes. They included three of its co-chairs, the UK’s Sir Iain Duncan Smith (who was sanctioned by China in 2021), Germany’s Reinhard Butikofer, and Slovakia’s Miriam Lexmann.
In the European Parliament (EP), Butikofer and Lexmann have carved out a reputation for ideological posturing, and they besmirch China at every opportunity. Their anti-China credentials were first proclaimed on June 30, 2020, when they launched the Hong Kong Watch Friendship Group of the European Parliament, an informal grouping of which they became co-chairs. At the launch, Butikofer declared it was important to “stand with the people of Hong Kong, to oppose attempts to subvert Hong Kong’s autonomy”. He claimed that, by enacting the national security law, “Beijing is violating international agreements”, and, with IPAC’s help, he has been myth-making along those lines ever since.
On June 15, moreover, when the EP adopted a resolution that was highly critical of Hong Kong and China’s role in the city, it was IPAC — which peddles misinformation to parliamentarians and encourages provocations — that played a key role. It openly boasted that the resolution had been “driven forward” by two of its own “co-chairs”, Butikofer and Lexmann, and its cancerous activities deserve to be better understood by everybody who wishes to know how the resolution came about.
Once IPAC was founded on June 4, 2020, it successfully hoovered up politicians in different parliaments who resent China’s rise in world affairs, and are prepared not only to maintain US hegemony but also to further its interests. It does this in various ways, most notably by deploying fanatics like Butikofer, Lexmann and Duncan Smith to spread fake news and propose hostile initiatives. IPAC has infiltrated its proxies into the EP, and their modus operandi includes maligning Hong Kong whenever possible, misrepresenting how the city has bounced back after the insurrection of 2019-20, and lionizing anybody committed to harming China.
Once, however, people appreciate that IPAC is simply an offshoot of Hong Kong Watch, the UK-based anti-China propaganda outfit operated by the serial fantasist Benedict Rogers, its role can more easily be understood. Since 2017, Hong Kong Watch has sought to undermine Hong Kong from afar, imagining this will weaken China. Apart from IPAC, it has forged close links with anti-China forces in the US, including the Hong Kong Democracy Council, and it has now opened a branch in Canada, also dedicated to propaganda.
Having witnessed Lexmann’s activities in the EP, Rogers decided recently to appoint her as an “International Patron” of Hong Kong Watch, thereby increasing his influence over her (he now calls her “my friend and hero”). Indeed, as soon as the EP’s resolution was passed, Hong Kong Watch declared, “We are particularly grateful to our patron Miriam Lexmann”. As the resolution deployed language often used by Hong Kong Watch itself, it appears that Rogers contributed to its formulation, either directly, through Lexmann, or indirectly, through his long-time lieutenant, Luke de Pulford.
In 2020, Rogers appointed de Pulford as the “policy director” of Hong Kong Watch, then as its “fellow”, and he now sits on its advisory board. He was tasked with founding IPAC, in order to proselytize and spread anti-China propaganda in the world’s parliaments, and he is now its executive director and coordinator. His work, however, is still overseen by Rogers, who has insinuated himself onto IPAC’s advisory group, and this enables him not only to monitor de Pulford but also to influence the EP’s members, including Butikofer.
The EP resolution, undoubtedly with IPAC’s connivance, urged the Hong Kong government to drop the national security charges against the criminal suspect Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, and to release him, along with other political activists facing trial. This nonsense, of course, was straight out of the Hong Kong Watch playbook, and, as an attempt to pervert public justice, it was contemptuous of the rule of law.
In Hong Kong, nobody, not even Lai, is above the law, and, whereas everybody accused of an offense is entitled to a fair trial, a suspect will only be convicted if guilt is proved beyond a reasonable doubt. No amount of political grandstanding by Strasbourg’s ideologues will ever succeed in thwarting the city’s criminal justice processes, and anybody who thinks otherwise can join Rogers in cloud cuckoo land.
In another hypocritical twist, the EP resolution criticized Hong Kong over its decision to exclude an overseas lawyer, Timothy Owen KC, from representing Lai at his forthcoming trial. What, however, the EP ignored (probably because IPAC had not informed it), is that other major common law jurisdictions, including Australia, Canada, Ireland, the UK and the US, also do not allow overseas lawyers to appear in their courts to conduct national security cases. Thus, double standards apart, there was absolutely no basis for singling out Hong Kong, particularly as Lai is at liberty to choose any locally qualified lawyer he wants to represent him (even if a foreigner).
The EP resolution, moreover, called on the “Chinese authorities to repeal the National Security Law”, which, as even its supporters must have realized, was joke politics. Although their own countries all have national security laws, often stringent, they cannot seriously expect China to render Hong Kong defenseless again, just as it was before 2020. It was precisely because the city lacked the national security protections enjoyed elsewhere that insurrectionists nearly destroyed the “one country, two systems” policy in 2019, and the new law has been its salvation.
Although tough, the national security law is nowhere near as draconian as its counterparts in, for example, Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore, all previously ruled by the UK. Unlike Hong Kong, none of those countries has incorporated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, with its fair trial guarantees, into its national security law, and they all retain the preventive detention of criminal suspects as well as capital punishment. It is, therefore, mind-boggling that the EP ignores the situation in those places while trying to bully little Hong Kong. This, of course, is proof positive not only of its bad faith, but also of its willingness to subordinate its supposed values to the global anti-China crusade, coordinated by IPAC and masterminded by the US.
For some years, moreover, Hong Kong Watch has advocated what it calls “targeted sanctions” against Chinese officials involved in Hong Kong, and it now hopes the EP can help out with its dirty work. It was, therefore, no surprise that the EP resolution called on the European Union (EU) to introduce “targeted sanctions” against Chinese officials “for the ongoing human rights crackdown in the city”, including the chief executive, John Lee Ka-chiu. Although the US, as an unprincipled bullyboy, has repeatedly abused its sanction powers, the EU will hopefully have the good sense not to get into the gutter with it. After all, two can play the sanctions game, and inflammatory gestures are the last thing anybody with a brain wants to see as the EU and China seek to forge a sounder relationship for the future.
As IPAC wanted, the EP resolution also called on Hong Kong “to stop impeding the work of journalists”, demonstrating its woeful ignorance. In Hong Kong, the Basic Law specifically guarantees “freedom of speech, of the press and of publication” (Art.27), and this is scrupulously observed by the authorities. Although journalists, like everybody else, must abide by the law, they are free, for example, to criticize the government, to conduct investigations, and to expose malpractice, and this they regularly do (with the Hong Kong Free Press, for example, being particularly active).
Indeed, the city’s media landscape is as vibrant as ever. In February, it was revealed that there are no fewer than 209 media organizations registered with the Information Services Department, whether based locally, on the mainland or overseas. Even though this is an increase after the implementation of the national security law, it was ignored by the EP, presumably because IPAC had not informed it.
To be fair, IPAC was probably also kept in the dark by Hong Kong Watch, as this is its usual practice. After all, there is nothing Hong Kong Watch dislikes more than positive news coming out of Hong Kong, and whenever it appears, it tries, as a matter of policy, to ignore it.
When, for example, on Oct 21, 2022, the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index 2022 was issued, it was disregarded by Hong Kong Watch. This was because it ranked Hong Kong as 22nd out of the 140 places surveyed (ahead, for example, of the US at 26th, Italy at 32nd, and Greece at 44th), which was no mean feat.
When, moreover, it was announced, on Jan 13, that the former chief justice of the Federal Court of Australia, Patrick Keane, was to be appointed a non-permanent judge of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (HKCFA), this good news was ignored by Hong Kong Watch. It also suppressed Keane’s statement about “how successful the Court has been in its role in defending the rule of law”, which, of course, was the very last thing Rogers and de Pulford wanted IPAC or the EP to learn about.
Indeed, the HKCFA daily demonstrates its worth and is highly regarded internationally, which upsets Hong Kong Watch no end. It regularly delivers judgments that go against the administration, and, for example, on June 5, it quashed Hong Kong journalist Bao Choy’s conviction for making false statements to access vehicle records. Although its judgment was widely welcomed in journalistic circles, Hong Kong Watch failed to publicize it, let alone brief IPAC and the EP over its implications, and this was because judgments like this give the lie to its claim that there is no longer an independent judiciary in Hong Kong.
The picture that emerges, therefore, is of the EP being led up the garden path by hate merchants with sinister agendas of their own to serve. As the information it receives from IPAC and its allies is invariably twisted or deficient, nobody can expect its resolutions to be balanced or fair. Although the extent to which bigots like Rogers and de Pulford have been able to infiltrate the EP and turn it against China is concerning, there is no reason to suppose that the EU’s 27 member states will pay serious heed to a resolution that was so clearly hypocritical, inaccurate and malicious.
As Macron explained, if the EU is to be relevant, it has to learn to live in the real world. The fantasy world inhabited by IPAC and Hong Kong Watch has nothing to offer anybody, least of all the European Parliament. If, therefore, its parliamentarians do not wise up soon and realize how IPAC has taken them for a ride, they will find their credibility in global affairs has been fatally compromised.
The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong SAR.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
