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Opinion | If Hong Kong loses its freedoms, it will lose its trade status too. This may be Carrie Lam’s lesson to learn
- The arrest of a district councillor under a colonial-era sedition law and Beijing’s order stopping a dozen foreign journalists from working in Hong Kong are a blow to the city’s freedoms
- This may trigger a warning from the US as it reviews recent developments under the Hong Kong Policy Act
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Why you can trust SCMP
They came in the middle of the night. The police, about 10 of them, swooping on a flat in Kwai Chung. Inside was a sleepy woman. They took her away. A terrorist planning to blow up Government House? No. An American spy fomenting Hong Kong independence? No.
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Their target was a 60-year-old opposition district councillor, Cheng Lai-king. Her alleged crime? Doxxing a policeman. OK, doxxing anyone is not right. But why grab the suspect in the dead of night? Maybe they feared she was a flight risk.
The whole world is in lockdown, for goodness sake. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Where would she flee to? The mainland, where opposition politicians are likely to face a worse fate than being struck by the coronavirus?
To me, the night-time knock on the door was to send a chilling message. Why else would they use a 1938 colonial-era sedition law to arrest her for doxxing, haul her to the police station, take a simple statement, not charge her but detain her until the afternoon then release her on bail?
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Cheng, a Democratic Party member who chairs the Central and Western District Council, is known for her clashes with the police, including the commissioner, during meetings.
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