Hong Kong authorities are declining to provide details of six recent arrests under a national security law, fueling growing concerns about government transparency as it tightens controls on dissent.
Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee said Tuesday that since the promulgation of the National Security Law in 2020, 332 individuals have been arrested. That was an increase of six arrests since Secretary for Security Chris Tang stated on June 1 that 326 people had been arrested under the law, with 165 convictions.
When local media asked about the new arrests, the Security Bureau said detailed breakdowns of arrest figures are “classified information related to safeguarding national security in the HKSAR and thus will not be made public.” HKSAR stands for Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Political commentator Sampson Wong said that in the past the Hong Kong government rarely used national security as a reason to withhold information, and now the public’s basic right to know was being damaged.
“At this point, reporters can still detect some of these arrests, but how long will that last? In the future, will people be arrested without anyone knowing?” Wong asked.
“Anything could be labelled a breach of confidentiality. If this continues, the truth will be completely under the control of national security authorities,” he said.
The National Security Law was adopted after massive pro-democracy protests in 2019 as Beijing tightened controls over Hong Kong, which had enjoyed greater civic freedoms than mainland China and greater government transparency, including by police. China maintains the 2020 law was required to maintain order.
Last month, the Hong Kong government bypassed Legislative Council procedures and unilaterally enacted two new subsidiary laws under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, which significantly expanded the powers of Beijing’s office overseeing national security in the city.
Under the measures, it is prohibited to disclose or film the office’s operations; civil servants must cooperate with and support national security operations; and any act that obstructs national security officers from performing their duties is criminalized.
While it remains unclear which six arrests happened in the past two weeks, on June 2, the National Security Department arrested one man and four women for allegedly conspiring to commit terrorist activities. The suspects had reportedly used phones, emails, and messaging apps to send messages threatening to bomb central government offices and a sports park, while also promoting pro-independence messages for Taiwan and Hong Kong.
On June 6, prominent democracy advocate Joshua Wong, who is already serving a four-year-and-eight-month sentence for subversion, was formally arrested on an additional charge of “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces.”
Last week, authorities also launched a national security investigation into six unnamed persons on suspicion of “colluding with a foreign country.” But the Security Bureau clarified that no arrests had been made as yet related to that probe.
Edited by Mat Pennington.
