Restricting Internet Freedom Won’t Stop Hong Kong’s Protests
By HRF’s Center for Law and Democracy
Yesterday, as masked Hong Kong citizens dressed up to celebrate Halloween in streets full of tear gas, the government successfully obtained a temporary injunction to curtail online speech in the city.
In recent days, the Hong Kong government has applied for a series of injunctions to ban protest-related activities in an attempt to discourage the pro-democracy protests that have gone on for more than four months.
This latest injunction prohibits online speech that “promotes, encourages or incites the use or threat of violence” that is “intended or likely to cause” physical injury or property damage. By implementing the injunction, the Hong Kong government joins other authoritarian governments like Vietnam and Thailand in stifling free speech online.
Speech-restrictive laws have long been used by authoritarian governments in Asia to suppress dissent. In Vietnam, dissidents are often arrested for criticizing the government on Facebook. In Thailand, activists face more than a decade in prison under lese-majeste charges that forbid criticism of the royal family.
The danger of speech-restrictive laws is that they are often overly broad and vaguely worded, so that the exact definition of what constitutes incitement of violence, in Hong Kong’s case, is open to the government’s interpretation. The broad interpretation means authoritarian governments such as Carrie Lam’s are able to use these speech-restrictive laws however they like to persecute dissidents and protesters.
Speech-restrictive legal measures typically do not comply with international law. Under international legal standards, incitement laws must require that the inciting act would cause imminent physical injury, instead of the lower “intended or likely” threshold established in the Hong Kong injunction. By violating the international legal standard on speech-restrictive laws, the Hong Kong government violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which is written into the Hong Kong Basic Law.
Hong Kong protesters have long feared that the government would take further steps, such as internet shutdowns, to impede online organizing activities. Although the Hong Kong government claims they did not plan to further target internet activities using the Emergency Regulations Ordinance (ERO), their actions say otherwise. The fact that the injunction specifically called out online organizing platforms such as the LIHKG forum and the Telegram messaging app shows that Hong Kong’s internet freedom is at great risk. With the door of the ERO opened, Carrie Lam’s government is now able to bypass normal legislative channels and impose other bans of protest-related online activities.
If Carrie Lam thinks injunctions to restrict online speech will bring about an end to the pro-democracy protests, she’s wrong. Hong Kong people have come up with one creative strategy after another in the summer of dissent. The latest injunction is only a small obstacle that protesters will bypass and leave behind in their fight for democracy.
