Opinion | 53 Detained: HK govt showing its determination to uphold the National Security Law

By Alan Leung, Blogger specialized in current affairs

Last Wednesday, in an operation led by the National Security Department, nearly 1,000 police officers conducted raids across Hong Kong, detaining 53 people on suspicion of subversion under the national security law. The detainees are suspected of having taken an active part in organizing, planning or participating in the pan-democratic camp's "35-plus" plans including campaigning for an unofficial primary run-off election last July.

The pan-democratic camp's "35-plus" plans aimed at gaining a majority of the 70-member Legislative Council in the now-postponed official election last year, this was completely legal under the Basic Law until it became a part of a wider strategy to blackmail the Hong Kong Government and Beijing into bowing to the camp's demands including full compliance to their specified democracy reform or face their "laam chau" (burn together) - mutual destruction option.

Under "laam chau", the camp planned to take Hong Kong's 7.5 million citizens hostage, by paralyzing the government amidst the global pandemic through vetoing every bill including government's budget requests and forcing the chief executive to resign under Article 52 of the Basic Law, which stated the chief executive must resign if the new Legco, after the Legislative Council is dissolved because it refuses to pass a budget or any other important bill, the new Legislative Council still refuses to pass the original bill in dispute.

The continuous abuse of Article 52 would've resulted in Hong Kong being without a chief executive and a functioning government. The government would also soon run out of money, as a result of all budget requests being vetoed, to support ongoing pandemic response and emergency relief, police operation and response to a new round of civil unrest, and over time even the most basic governance work, effectively destroying the livelihood of the people and putting Hong Kong at risk of a major COVID-19 outbreak.

The pan-democratic's ultimate aim is to use Hong Kong as a hostage to force the Hong Kong Government and Beijing into bowing to their demands or to use the destruction of Hong Kong to provoke Beijing into ending the "one country, two systems" policy early or force Beijing into taking drastic measures to protect Hong Kong stability, livelihood and to stop a major COVID-19 outbreak, to trigger a new round of international condemnation and/or sanctions against China.

Nonetheless, many legal experts in Hong Kong have expressed that the primaries itself would not have violated the national security law and could only be considered subversion if there was more evidence the plan involved violence or other unlawful behavior. The police had released more than 30 suspects on bail by Thursday and at time of writing only former Democratic Party chairman Wu Chi-wai remained in custody for violating the conditions of his bail from a previous charge.

The entire operation might have been a big fishing operation and a preventive measure to ensure the suspects don't escape to another country during the investigation, because it has never been possible to lay charges on all 53 suspects, since it will require some strong evidence to make charges stick and the police will also need to meet prosecutor's high threshold to bring charges. Thus, the National Security Department should only be targeting a few key players such as Benny Tai, the "35-plus" plan mastermind, and former lawmakers who showed support publicly and/or campaigned to push the plan forward.

In addition, the government may have used the opportunity, of bringing a large number of suspects in to assist in investigation for a high profiled national security related cases, to put on a big show to warn anyone who wants to continue their so-called revolution that the government means business, because if the government didn't take any action and show its willingness to uphold the national security law, the deterrent effect and authoritativeness of the law would be reduced considerably.

At the end of the day, the opposition, media and western governments, especially the US, will continue to make a lot of noise while constantly throwing the usual crackdowns, suppression of freedom...etc accusations. We should simply take no notice of them and trust our police, if there is sufficient evidence they will not be able get away since the police have taken preventive measures by having them hand in their passport as part of their bail condition.

However, if there isn't sufficient evidence to lay charges, it only means the plan didn't get far enough to break the national security law and all the noise they made back then was to make everything seem much bigger than it really was. Either way, the incident will show the Hong Kong government's determination to uphold the national security law and will act as a powerful deterrent, and warning to the opposition, foreign forces and anyone who intends to bring harm to Hong Kong.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.