The Hong Kong puppet government filed a request for an injunction in the China-controlled courts to prevent the song “Glory to Hong Kong” from being available on the internet.
The song became an unofficial anthem of the 2019 democracy protests and, in many venues, was played instead of China’s national anthem. The government ended up banning the song virtually everywhere — except on the internet, which is largely controlled by Big Tech companies.
Naturally, this bothered the Communists in Beijing so they filed their request for an injunction. But to almost everyone’s surprise, the court rejected the government’s request, with the judge, Anthony Chan, ruling that the government’s request was too broad. Chan wrote that the injunction could have had a “chilling effect” on free speech in Hong Kong.
“Freedom of expression is not absolute in nature but is nonetheless a highly important right that cannot be lawfully restricted without the requirements of legal certainty and proportionality being met,” he added.
Judge Chan also said that it would have been wrong to grant the injunction because existing criminal laws already gave the authorities the power to prosecute people for spreading the song, and that this ban would have been difficult to enforce, and unnecessary. Numerous people in Hong Kong have been arrested or charged for playing the song in public under an expansive national security law that Beijing imposed on the territory in 2020.
The injunction case has been closely watched in the Hong Kong business and tech communities. Foreign firms seeking access to China have long seen the city as an attractive hub, away from censorship controls in the rest of the country.
The surprise is that Chan refused to rubber-stamp the government’s request. The judge did not make any statement that would lead us to believe he was revolting against Beijing’s authority. But any daylight between the Chinese Communists and the marketplace of ideas is welcome.
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Legal experts and business leaders said they were surprised by the decision, given the Hong Kong courts’ record in ruling on behalf of the government in matters concerning national security. Some said they were encouraged that the judge was willing to hold the government in check.
Kristian Odebjer, a lawyer and the chairman of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, said he welcomed the judge’s decision. The “Glory to Hong Kong” case had risked “muddling” the city’s reputation as a place where the internet is open, he said. In China, the authorities block content and websites they don’t like, a system called the Great Firewall.
“The fact that Hong Kong is outside of the Great Firewall, that we have a free flow of information and a free internet, that is clearly the key fundament in what Hong Kong is offering the world, and a key differentiator,” said Odebjer.
Yes, but the hard fact is that a bit of freedom means nothing if it can be squashed by the government. “A bird on a tether, no matter how long the rope, can always be pulled back,” President Reagan told students and faculty at Moscow State University in 1988.
Many on the left believe that our fundamental rights are granted by government and do not occur in nature. They believe in the “bird on a tether.” The Chinese government certainly believes that. Changing that power dynamic will be the first step in ending Communist control in China.
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