One does not wish to seem ungrateful, but the enduring mystery of the hour – exactly what do officials mean by “soft resistance” – has not been much clarified by the secretary for justice, who offered a definition last month.
Soft resistance, said Paul Lam, has three main elements: making false or misleading statements, expressing them irrationally with emotional bias, and having the intention to create misunderstandings about the Chinese or Hong Kong governments and their policies.
This looks like an extension of the law on subversion, already unmoored from its Common Law attachment to the provocation of violence. If this were the case, it would still leave a variety of tricky questions. For example, would sincere belief in the truth of the statement complained of be a defence?
But Mr Lam scotched this notion by adding that “methods of soft resistance may not always be illegal, but that did not mean they did not harm society.”
He also said that although the term was hard to define the government would not use it arbitrarily. ”You can say it is a political term,” he mused. “Not all issues in society should be addressed by legal means. [Legal means] are also not always the most effective way of handling [matters].”
This brings us to a rather alarming question: What non-legal means is the government proposing to use?
A few reminders: We have repeatedly been assured that freedom of expression continues to be protected in Hong Kong. Both the Basic Law and the National Security Law reiterate the point, which is often also made by officials.
Anyone who complains about apparent infringements will be referred to the relevant part of the Bill of Rights Ordinance, which permits exceptions to protect – put briefly – reputations, public order (including national security) and public decency.
But there is one condition attached to these exceptions: They must be “provided by law.” That means that if a person engages in soft resistance, deplorable though that may be, using methods which are not illegal, then he or she is exercising the right to self-expression and is entitled to Mr Lam’s protection while doing so.
The answer to soft resistance that does not break the law is, of course, soft repression. This could take the form of counterarguments, pointing out untruths, denouncing irrational language and correcting misinterpretations of government policies.
This should not be too difficult. The government has a whole department devoted to putting its version of events before the public. RTHK is at its service, and most of our surviving media take pride in doing more than justice to the government line.
The answer to erroneous speech is, or should be, correct speech.
Yet somehow, I do not think this was on the mind of the numerous senior officials who thought a 28th Handover anniversary speech was a good opportunity to denounce the evils of soft resistance and promise to extirpate it.
Rosanna Law, the secretary for culture, art and tourism, for example, promised to step up scrutiny before allowing funding or the use of venues for shows.
Other issuers of permits of various kinds are apparently putting their shoulders to the wheel.
Of late, we learn that restaurants can lose their licences, social workers and teachers can be drummed out of their professions. Some people cannot run a bookshop without entertaining a stream of visitors from government departments, citing anonymous complaints about hygiene, fire safety, business regulations or whatever.
We may have a government which, as Mr Lam said, welcomes criticism, but it is not very good at looking like that.
The problem with this sort of thing is that after a while it makes people suspicious. Maybe the venue you wanted to hire really does have an air-conditioning problem. Who knows? The Lord moves in mysterious ways and routinely refuses to discuss individual cases.
Recently the Inland Revenue Department resumed sending me annual tax returns. In normal times I would put this down to a lucrative one-off freelance gig in 2023 after which the employer very properly filed the usual form reporting how much it paid me.
As it happened, though, this sudden renewal of interest in my finances coincided with several stories about news media and individual reporters being asked for large tax payments they did not owe. So an innocent bit of bureaucratic routine looks … fishy.
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