tim's experiment

What ’s this? We have a little rash of stories warning that, as one headline put it, “UK move ‘won’t make your kids happy’, expert warns”. This is supposed, perhaps, to be a reproof to parents contemplating a BNO move to the UK “for the sake of the children”.

This all started with a Letter from Hong Kong. This is an RTHK radio programme which, for many years, occasionally featured me. The performer talks  — for I think it was 12 minutes — on any topic of his or her choice. No doubt the performers are chosen rather carefully these days.

Last week’s star was Prof Ho Lok-sang, a retired economist. I have serious misgivings about economists studying happiness, an elusive and less quantifiable thing than their usual prey. But Prof Lo has worked in the area before and in 2015 actually published a piece in the usual academic circles on an Annual Happiness Index in Hong Kong, which would make interesting reading now.

However the news hook to which Prof Ho hung his comments was a report by the Boys and Girls Association of Hong Kong, which said that happiness among Hong Kong youngsters had fallen to its lowest level in five years. It also found, though this did not feature so prominently in media reports, that about 10 per cent of Hong Kong youngsters thought they would emigrate in the near future.

Well as a matter of common sense, leaving the economics out of it, I must say I rather agree with Prof Ho that emigrating is not in itself going to make the kids happy. My parents moved a lot when I was very small – we lived in Germany for a while, a daring choice in the late 1940s – and as long as the family was together it just seemed a minor background thing that we lived like gypsies.

Emigration is stressful. On the other hand staying in Hong Kong is likely to be stressful as well, under present circumstances. Prof Ho’s advice that we should all “nurture a mind which is at ease with ourselves” is good, but perhaps a bit beside the point. Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage, sang the poet, but the thought of being consigned to the hospitality of the Correctional Services for opining that voting in the new system would be a waste of time is still off-putting.

Having disposed of the common sense point, I must say I thought the statistical evidence very questionable. Measuring people’s happiness is inherently tricky. Small changes in the circumstances in which the question is asked can produce drastic changes in the answers. And questions like “How happy are you with your life these days” involve cultural influences which comparisons of the GDP figures do not have to worry about.

Prof Ho offers for comparison three sets of figures. The first is the Boys and Girls one. The second is an annual exercise called the Good Childhood Report, conducted by something called the Children’s Society, which is an offshoot of the Church of England.

The report says that the level of happiness of British children has declined for five years in a row. I am not sure that that comes as a great surprise, in view of events in the UK over the period.

More contentiously it goes on to cite a survey conducted in 2018 which found that British children were in some respects among the least happy in Europe. Actually this is a partial result of the PISA survey of education systems, and only applies to 15-year-olds. The Children’s Society tweaked it a bit but it is true that on this measure the Brits were quite gloomy.

Now I think we need to be a bit careful with the Children’s Society. It is a charity, and like most charities it needs a good cause which will attract donations. It thrives on bad news and those who thrive on bad news can usually find it somewhere.

I also believe that the comparison with Europe is no doubt very relevant for potential British donors to children’s needs, but quite unfair if put to Prof Ho’s purpose, which is to imply that kids in the UK are less happy than those in Hong Kong, so moving there will make your offspring miserable.

Concentrating on Europe means setting a very high standard. The big global survey of happiness among adults is the World Happiness Report, which covers more than 100 countries. The top places are invariably filled by Scandinavian countries, followed by other European democracies. The latest figure has Finland as the world’s happiest country, the UK at number 18 (Taiwan at 19 is the top Asian … euphemism) China at 52 and Hong Kong at 66.

Over the three years 2018-20 the top three were Finland, Denmark and Switzerland, with UK 17, Hong Kong 77 and China 84. These results are fairly stable. The previous three years: Finland 1, Denmark 2, Norway 3, UK 15, Hong Kong 76, China 93.  

Another way of looking at it is to ignore the rankings and look at the actual figures from the PISA questions. True, the Brit results were depressing when compared with some others, but 64 per cent of the respondents were satisfied with their lives, 93 per cent reported a high level of happiness generally, 40 per cent said they were rarely or never sad and 57 per cent had no complaints about their sense of the purpose of life. 

If you wanted to risk a visit from the Nat Sec police you could tentatively draw from all of the above that becoming more like China will make Hong Kong a bit less happy and moving to the UK will make anyone more happy, though not as happy as if they moved to Finland. This is probably drawing more from the statistics than is justified.

Actually whatever the factors in society which produce these national differences, they will be quite overwhelmed in the case of individual people and families by more immediate events: the exam goes badly, the dog dies, the parents divorce, an expected promotion does not materialise, the house falls down…

It is right that people contemplating emigration anywhere should be warned that they are not diving into a bed of roses. The UK is no exception. You will not like the climate and some of the people are prejudiced. On the other hand you can say what you like and you will never have to listen to the March of the Volunteers again. Your choice. 

Read Full Post »

We must all be grateful to former legislator Ted Hui, for publishing his correspondence with the police complaints system.

There is plenty of evidence at the macro level, of thousands of complaints received and a number you could count on the fingers of one hand accepted and acted on, usually in a painless way for the policeman concerned.

We also have the Independent Police Complaints Council’s report on the 2019 disturbances, which paints a clear picture of an organisation desperate to avoid finding that the police did anything wrong, and when that becomes unavoidable wrapping it up in the sort of woolly language which confuses more than it illuminates.

But we do not often see an individual complaint in detail, working its way through the system to the usual destination: rejection.

The incident of which Mr Hui complained occurred at a protest on January 1 last year. Unusually, this one had a Letter of No Objection from the Commissioner of Police. It was, however, cut short by police at the scene, apparently because someone had vandalised a branch of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank.

Nobody seems to have noticed that this is a rather questionable procedure. The Public Order Ordinance says that people planning a demonstration need a Letter of No Objection from the Commissioner. It does not say that this can be revoked at any time by a junior officer. 

One would have thought, or hoped, that once the LONO was issued the protest would be entitled to protection as a legitimate exercise of free speech rights. The right to protest is enshrined in relevant ordinances and international instruments. It is not a favour bestowed by the police on condition of good behaviour by everyone present.

After all we did not know, and indeed still do not know, who vandalised the bank. It could have been protesters, it could have been some thrill-seekers with no particular political thoughts in mind, it could have been agents provocateur who opposed the protest. It could, we must reluctantly include, have been plain clothes policemen who wanted a bit of fun.

If protest organisers are at the mercy of any passing stranger who breaks the law then the right to protest is not being protected. In view of events since January 2020 this is perhaps not surprising.

Anyway Mr Hui’s complaint did not pursue this point at all. He complained that while he was standing on the pavement, in apparent accord with police instructions, a policeman tore his goggles off and pepper-sprayed him at close range, and did this twice.

He also complained that the officer concerned was not wearing an identification number, but was wearing a badge which is not part of the approved uniform – saying “Police bad-ass” apparently – in violation of police rules.

Immediately after the incident there was, as there usually is, a police spokesman to explain that nothing untoward had occurred. Mr Hui had refused to disperse and was therefor to be “dispersed” with pepper spray.

This was not a happy inspiration. Police are not supplied with non-lethal weapons so that they can “disperse“ anyone who is not being cooperative. The weapons are supplied for the protection of officers. If Mr Hui was obstructing police operations he should have been arrested and appropriately charged.

There is nothing in the law which authorises police officers to administer summary punishment for disobedience.

It also transpired that in the video – these days there is always video – Mr Hui was in fact on the pavement where he should have been.

This detail was quietly ignored in the subsequent investigation of Mr Hui’s complaint by the Complaints Against Police Office, which produced this verdict: “On January 1, 2020 at around 8pm on Hennessy Road… the police were conducting a crowd-dispersing operation and had given you and other demonstrators multiple verbal warnings and displayed warning flags,” the letter read. “At the time, the police were facing a large volume of violent demonstrators and had no other option but to use the minimum level of force – that is, to spray pepper spray at you and other demonstrators. Therefore, we classify this allegation as ‘without fault.’”

The letter added that this conclusion had been endorsed by the IPCC. Clearly they had not viewed all the video, in which there is a startling dearth of violent demonstrators and a surplus of police officers pepper-spraying anything which took their fancy, including the reporter doing the video, which can be seen here.

However people who have read the IPCC’s full length whitewash will not be surprised to find that in their view any place which the police wish to clear is a free fire zone. The report mentions in passing that a reporter was shot in the eye with a rubber bullet and its only comment on this incident is that she was “standing on a footbridge which the public had been asked to leave”.

Contemplating the work of the IPCC I am often reminded of Wittgenstein’s warning that when you measure a table with a ruler you are also measuring the ruler with the table. The IPCC’s work tells us very little about how policing is or should be conducted. It tells us a lot about the IPCC.

Still, perhaps Mr Hui’s spraying was part of an exciting scene and could perhaps pass as a forgivable result of law enforcement frustration.

What surprises is what became of the other complaints. The letter said that the officer wearing a “bad-ass” badge “did not affect the force’s image or its effectiveness”.

Really? Is it the Complaints Against Police Office’s view that the force image is now so bad that the spectacle of officers violating their own rules is shrugged off by observers as no more than they expect?

The objection to freelance badge selection has nothing to do with the possible effect of the words displayed on public opinion, or on the effectiveness of the force. The objection is that those authorised and empowered to enforce the rules should themselves obey them. If the police force thinks it is a worthwhile boost to morale for officers to adorn their uniforms with personal mottos then it should change the rules.

And the matter of not wearing identification numbers was a clear violation, not only of police rules but of the law. In November last year the High Court ruled that the failure to ensure that officers on duty wear a unique identification number was a violation of the Bill of Rights Ordinance.

The court also held that “The Government of the HKSAR is under a duty, pursuant to Article 3 of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights, to establish and maintain an independent mechanism capable of conducting effective investigation into complaints of suspected ill-treatment by police officers in contravention of Article 3 of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights, and that the existing complaints mechanism involving the Complaints Against the Police Office, with oversight by the Independent Police Complaints Council, is inadequate to discharge this obligation.”

And yet, it seems, nothing has changed and nothing is going to change. Isn’t the Rule of Law wonderful?

Read Full Post »

Let us contemplate a paradox. As democracy recedes into the far distant future, the most unexpected people suddenly cannot resist talking about it. The very people who are depriving us of the reality cannot resist the word.

The Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, is a good example. Last week she was asked if she had any comment on a remark by Emily Lau – one of the few veteran democrats not in prison – that democrats might be reluctant to participate in the new system for filling Legco seats (there is not much actual election involved).

Ms Lau had said that potential candidates faced the hurdle of finding nominators in each of the new Election Committee’s five sectors, two of which are virtually filled with nominees of the Hong Kong or Beijing governments. Finding someone in those sectors who was willing to nominate a democrat was likely to involve a lot of rejections and candidates might find this humiliating.

Ms Lam might have expressed the hope that ambition and the wish to serve would overcome the prospect of begging for a nomination. Or she might have pointed out that the whole purpose of the new system was to discourage democrats so what did people expect?

Instead, she had a go at Ms Lau, who was “completely mistaken and did not know the spirit of elections and democracy”.

It is difficult to think of anyone less likely to be acceptable as an authority on the spirit of elections and democracy than Carrie Lam, who has never won a real election in her life. Ms Lau, by contrast, has won a number of elections of the old-fashioned kind, now no longer with us, in which anyone could stand and everyone could vote.

Similarly bereft of relevant experience is Mr C. Y. Leung, who opined last week that opposing government measures and filibustering were “not democracy”. Really? Filibustering is, I concede, controversial. Some people see it as a means whereby minorities can obstruct the will of the people, others see it as an important protection against the tyranny of temporary majority governments.

Opposing government measures, on the other hand, is generally considered rather useful.

Then we have another contribution from an election virgin, Mr Henry Litton. Mr Litton, like his fellow retired legal eagle Grenville Cross, has morphed gradually from a specialist commentator on legal matters to a stalwart defender of whatever the government is now doing.

Here is democracy according to Henry: “There are many models of democracy in the world; some are more successful than others. If democracy is to be defined as a community where government exercises power with the consent of the governed, then China is very much a democracy. An overwhelming majority of people in the Mainland today supports the government under the leadership of the Communist Party.”

Two errors here. Democracy is not defined as a place where the government exercises power with the consent of the governed. After all it is alleged on varying amounts of evidence that Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Josef Stalin and even Francisco Franco enjoyed at some points in their career “the consent of the governed”. This did not make their communities democratic. In a democratic community there is a mechanism for replacing the government when consent is withdrawn.

China, accordingly, would not be a democracy, even if we were prepared to accept that consent enforced by a million policemen and a further uncounted horde of spies and censors should be accepted as valid. How, one wonders, can Mr Litton, or anyone else, know that an overwhelming majority of people in the mainland supports anything? The overwhelming majority are not allowed to express an opinion.

Then we come to a more interesting offering from Ms Regina Ip, addressing the fear that there will be no pro-democracy councillors under the new arrangements: “They have participated in elections and so have I. Do they read more books about democracy than I do? I believe I have read more than a lot of people. How can you say that without them there will not be a pro-democracy camp?”

Ms Ip seems to be preparing to take over the pro-democracy banner, which should be an interesting spectacle. Actually nobody has suggested yet that the system is so completely rigged that no pro-democrat can be elected. It would be more accurate to say that the system is rigged so that no more than ten pro-democrats can be elected.

The question is whether being a permanent minority of ten in a 90-member council will appeal to any plausible pro-democrat, especially with the added hazard of campaigning in the shade of the national security law. 

Now let us turn to Mr Chris Lonsdale, a “consultant” with a flourishing China practice and, we need not doubt, a welcome visitor north of the boundary. Mr Lonsdale likes to condescend: ”For those with short memories, and those born after 1997, let us not forget that for the entire history of Hong Kong under British rule (except for the last few years leading up to 1997) there was NO direct democracy.”

Mr Lonsdale, alas, either has a short memory or was born after 1997. 

The Urban Council was founded in 1883 and had its first elected members in 1888. in 1956 changes included having half the members elected and in 1973 it became autonomous and entirely elected, electing a chairman and vice chairman from among its own members. There were a number of ways of becoming an elector and by 1981 it is estimated that 800,000 people were entitled to vote.

A condition of the council’s autonomy was that it stick to its official remit, which was to deal with a variety of domestic matters like sanitation, licensing, sport, culture, parks and such like. But once a year there was a general debate in which members could and did opine on any matter of public interest.

In 1986 a Regional Council was set up on the same basis to preside over services in the New Territories.

In 1997 the China-appointed Provisional Legislative Council passed an ordinance changing the constitution of both councils to include appointed members. In 1999 they were both abolished.

In 1982 partly elected District Boards appeared and in the 1985 DB elections more than half of their members were elected. By 1994 appointed members had disappeared but they were restored after the handover.

Over the ensuing years the appointees gradually disappeared again, as it appeared that the District Councils, as they were now called, were secure strongholds of the pro-government DAB. Now that is no longer the case they are likely to go the way of the two municipal councils.

Of course it is true, as Mr Lonsdale says, that the Governor was not chosen by Hong Kong people. Does he, I wonder, think the next Chief Executive will be?

Read Full Post »

Let us now consider an interesting mystery. What are the powers and functions of the newly minted official post, the Chief Convener of the Election Committee?

This is an interesting question, firstly because the old election committee seems to have managed without a convener, so it seems some new service will be provided, if we can find out what it is. Secondly the clarifications provided by different people have been flatly contradictory.

Here is what the new law says:

There shall be a system of conveners for the Election Committee. The conveners shall be responsible for convening meetings of the Election Committee as necessary and handle relevant matters. A chief convener shall be an Election Committee member who holds an office of state leadership. The chief convener shall designate a number of conveners for each sector of the Election Committee.

Got that? The Chief Convenor seems to have two functions: to convene meetings of the Electoral Committee and to choose sub-convenors for each sector. That’s straightforward enough, if it leaves the conveners without much to do. Presumably the actual dispatch of summonses to action will be done by civil servants, as it is now. What would be the “relevant matters” to be handled?

Well here is Carrie Lam, answering a question on the topic in her press conference to launch the new system:

“The convener has been specified in Annex 1 …I want to assure you that this is a clause for use under very, very exceptional and rare situations, and this convener system will only kick in during elections. During normal periods of governance, this convener system or the chief convener has absolutely no role in the governance of the Hong Kong SAR. It certainly will not have any influence over the Chief Executive or the Principal Officials. 

It is really under very exceptional circumstances during the course of an election that something that is totally unforeseeable has happened, that it needs a plan to tackle, then the Central Government may trigger this convener system.”

So, the convener has no role in the government of Hong Kong, but the system may be “triggered” by the Central Government if something unforeseeable happens in an election. 

Now here is an interview with Tam Yiu-chung published in the Standard:

“The new role of chief convener of the Election Committee will be in a superior position to the city’s chief executive and will represent Beijing, says Hong Kong’s sole delegate to the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, Tam Yiu-chung.

Speaking on a radio programme yesterday, Tam said the chief convener can call a meeting when there are election-related issues that cannot be resolved by law so it does not need the NPCSC to weigh in.

‘This is a gate-keeping mechanism so the chief convener should be superior than the chief executive,’ he said. ‘It means the person represents the central government at a certain level.’

So according to Mr Tam, the Chief Convener outranks the Chief Executive (who thinks he will “certainly have no influence over the Chief Executive and senior officials”) and represents Beijing. This is not what it says in Annex 1.

And what’s with the Chief Convener “calling a meeting” when there are election-related issues which cannot be resolved by law, so it does not need the NPCSC to step in?”

The NPCSC is China’s legislature. In “unforeseen circumstances” it can change the law. The Election Committee is not a legislature and if a problem cannot be resolved by law there is surely nothing the Election Committee can do to change it.

Does Mr Tam think that the Chief Convener’s handling of relevant matters could include changing the law on elections? 

It would also be nice to know how this “triggering” by the Central Government will take place. Presumably the Chief Convener will get the wheels turning off his own bat when he sees an election approaching. He doesn’t need to be triggered for such routine purposes. 

Maybe I’m missing something here, but I do not see how this is going to work at all.

Is the idea that the Chief Convener, horrified by – say – a campaign to boycott an election, might by himself define such activity as criminal? Under the Basic Law that is a job for Legco. Or is the idea that if the Police vetting and the two committees which will assess the eligibility of candidates let someone through who is not acceptable to the imperial capital, the Chief Convener can intervene and ban the candidate himself? That would, I suppose, count as gate-keeping, but would be a bit controversial.

This is a worry because apparently the only relevant “office of state leadership” is vice chairman of the CPPCC. That narrows the field down to two candidates, one of whom – Tung Chee-hwa – is getting a bit old for this shit. So this exciting new job could easily go to Leung Chun-ying. Isn’t that a soothing thought!

Read Full Post »

The return to Hong Kong of ten of the 12 people who were caught apparently trying to flee to Taiwan brought us more than a few wanted targets. Some mainland legal habits appear to have been in the luggage.

It is a characteristic of mainland justice that defendants often disappear from view, their whereabouts a complete mystery to friends and family. Legal representation is sporadic and defence lawyers often appear to have been selected by the prosecution rather than the defendant.

Trials are short and may feature no legal argument worth speaking of. Important decisions are often taken in the absence of the defendant.

It seems that staying in a mainland prison has interesting effects. Some of the 12 are reported to have developed a mysterious aversion to lawyers and a desire to unburden themselves to police interrogators without the presence of such people.

Andy Li, one of the suspects, managed to disappear completely. After a remand hearing, at which he was not present, his family faced a wall of silence from government departments. The Correctional Services Department denied any knowledge of Mr Li’s whereabouts. So did the police.

Mr Li’s latest non-appearance before a magistrate did produce one interesting change, a lawyer appeared claiming to be working on his behalf. This was news to Mr Li’s family. The lawyer concerned kept up the wall of silence, refusing to tell anyone where Mr Li might be.

The CSD apparently now admits that Mr Li is in its custody. It refuses to discuss the case but cites a policy under which prisoners who wish to have their location kept secret are allowed to do this by the department. I can see some prisoners might need this service, but providing it under present circumstances to this group of defendants produces a disturbing scene. One wonders if Mr Li is working on a video.

Part of the problem here is the COVID situation. Apparently all the prisoners are required, like everyone else arriving in Hong Kong, to serve a period of quarantine. This is difficult to arrange if they are to appear in court so they do not.

The relevant departments do not seem to have considered the implications of the resulting spectacle: absent defendants unrepresented in court are remanded in custody after a brief formal hearing in which nobody present is looking out for their interests. This is not satisfactory. Decisions about people’s liberty should not be made on this basis: justice should be seen to be done.

I suggest that magistrates should insist on such occasions that an absent defendant is represented by someone, preferably a lawyer of his choice. If such a defendant adamantly refuses legal help he should be present via Zoom or some such gadget, so that he can at least see what is done to or for him, and any relatives or friends who turn up can see that he is still in one piece.

The two juveniles who were also on the ill-fated voyage raise a different issue. The mainland authorities took the humane and sensible decision that there was no point in lobbing them into the jaws of the local legal machinery, and sent them back to Hong Kong, where they arrived in December. Police said they might be charged with further offences and we have heard nothing since.

Hong Kong, like China, is a signatory of the relevant international treaty, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which provides that “In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.” The two kids on the boat are clearly covered by this treaty: “the child” in this context means up to 18 years old.

Consequently it is not acceptable for them to be treated to the usual approach to the persecution — I beg your pardon prosecution — of other political targets, in which the defendant languishes in custody for months while the Department of Justice (sic) gets its ducks in a row. 

This does not by any stretch of the imagination serve the “best interests” of the children concerned. If they are to be tried they should be tried without delay in a proper Juvenile Court.

Read Full Post »