Hong Kong iMail: HK Media Reviews Tung Chee-hwa, Falun Gong, Freedom of Religious Rights (excerpt)

An associate professor in the Government and International Studies Department of the Hong Kong Baptist University

05/02/2001

The Falun Gong controversy just won't go away. With Anson Chan Fang On-sang's perfume still lingering in the office, brand-new Chief Secretary for Administration Donald Tsang Yam-kuen found himself on camera, justifying a tight watch on the controversial [group].

[...]

Local and national government officials obviously consider squelching this group [...] a matter of vital state security. For the vast majority of Hong Kongers, however, it provokes a ... yawn. Fully two-thirds in early April said they'd paid little to no attention to the controversy. Only 6 per cent paid a lot and just one in four gave it "some" attention.

In terms of control measures, 8 per cent went so far as restricting Falun Gong's public activities. But a third of respondents just supported watching.

Another third said do nothing, there's no need to take any steps. Out of 837 people, two, not 2 per cent, just two respondents thought Falun Gong members should be jailed. So much for the "patriotic" element in Hong Kong who seemingly back Beijing's every impulse, bad or good.

Even they didn't come out on this issue.

And thus Mr Tung's big, maybe intractable problem: how to persuade the Hong Kong public that these few hundred people standing around in yellow T-shirts with their eyes shut and arms extended constitute a clear and present danger to the social order? Worse, how can he crack down on the tiny band of followers without coming across as a bully out to imperil everyone's freedom to believe pretty much as they choose? And how can he possibly crack down without thereby proving Falun Gong's charges of unreasonable governmental injustice and mistreatment? Tung Chee-hwa tried to play the Hong Kong version of the "China card". He warned Falun Gong members to stick to the nature of their Societies Ordinance registration documents as a group promoting health and meditation. If they tried to "embarrass" the SAR and mainland governments during this important meeting, he would consider it political protest, not health promotion. He implied possible deregistration in retaliation.

Many probably think, at least among the few paying attention, that Falun Gong shouldn't provoke the dragon and make everybody losers. But it's not just the mainland dragon who might be provoked; there's an eagle circling around keeping an extra sharp watch on what's happening here.

President George W Bush is even moving to put a personal friend from Hong Kong in charge as China ambassador. The critical "eagle" eye of the US is getting focused as never before on China and since being poked in the eye on Hainan Island, he's not in a good mood to overlook faults. And a bill coming into effect spells out even more faults to look for.

In October 1998, Congress passed a bill "to express United States foreign policy with respect to, and to strengthen United States advocacy on behalf of, individuals persecuted in foreign countries on account of religion; to authorise United States actions in response to violations of religious freedom in foreign countries; to establish an Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom within the Department of State, a Commission on International Religious Freedom, and a Special Adviser on International Religious Freedom within the National Security Council".

The nominally-religious Clinton White House dragged its feet on implementation. But the Bush administration with its hard-right conservative Christian penchant, supported by Republicans of a similar bent, has moved rapidly to put into place details of "The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998".

This act requires an annual report on each country's state of religious freedom. The first report is due to Congress this September 1.

What makes this act important for Hong Kong and the mainland is that it puts religious freedom issues on new footings, establishes new procedures and offices that are already becoming the focus of influential religious and human-rights lobbies and, most of all, requires the president to take an extensive range of actions to promote greater religious freedom in countries deemed to be violators.

These actions can range from a private undertaking by the president or representatives to violating heads of state, to public condemnation, to condemnation in such international bodies as the United Nations. It can proceed to cancellation of scientific and cultural exchanges, to directing the Export-Import Bank to deny credit to government-related agencies, firms, or officials, and even to directing the US representatives on the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other international financial agencies to vote against loans benefiting the violating country and/or officials.

If violations are deemed sufficiently serious, the president may direct denial of export licences in whole or part, and even prohibit the US government from purchasing any goods or services from any "government, entities, or officials found or determined by the President to be responsible for violations" under the bill.

The US is unlikely to antagonise China over religious freedom, you say? There's no reason to. US officials have learned over the years that general sanctions don't work. It has come to favour specific sanctions targeted at firms or officials most closely connected with a violating government. This works in the drug wars; now it gets a tryout in protection of what Karl Marx labelled "the opiate of the people".

These provisions mean that the president could possibly decide, for example, that if Mr Tung seriously violated religious freedom in Hong Kong, then his shipping firm could be targeted for some or all of the sanctions described. And there's no indication of just whom an "official" or "entity" might be limited to; perhaps even members of the Executive Council or the Election Committee might qualify.

If so, these "officials" could find themselves subject to damaging economic sanctions consequent to their support of a crackdown on Falun Gong.

Hong Kong's export-import trade provides our economic life-blood.

Even targeted sanctions would hurt. However, the US believes that any country which, or officials who, deprive people unreasonably of freedom can't be relied on as an international partner to preserve the peace and put business interests first.

[...] Infringing religious freedom in order to prevent embarrassment to President Jiang might be more costly to Mr Tung and his supporters than just losing a second term. Until Falun Gong prove themselves harmful by violent acts, a crackdown could wind up hurting everybody.