Last week, Hong Kong authorities denied entry to Japanese journalist Yoshiaki Ogawa. In latest months, they’ve additionally barred entry to Japanese photographer Michiko Kiseki and Japanese road musician “Mr. Wally.”
Although Hong Kong’s Immigration Department gave no clear causes for these refusals, the selections seem politically motivated: Ogawa and Kiseki documented Hong Kong’s 2019 protest motion, whereas Mr. Wally is well-known for his help of Hong Kong’s democracy activists.
These actions mirror the rising use of immigration bans towards overseas critics of the Hong Kong and Chinese governments, together with Japanese nationals. They additionally highlight the Hong Kong authorities’s speedy erasure of town’s once-vibrant liberties.
Since the Chinese authorities imposed the draconian National Security Law  in June 2020, authorities have turned town’s semi-democratic Legislative Council right into a rubber stamp; arrested and prosecuted town’s pro-democracy leaders; dismantled its civil society organizations, impartial labor unions, and hottest pro-democracy newspaper; throttled the free press; censored movies; and mandated “patriotic education.” Police have arrested 260 folks for nationwide safety offenses. Dozens have been prosecuted and convicted of sedition for on-line posts, displaying placards in public, or publishing youngsters’s books.
The Hong Kong authorities’ rising repression doesn’t cease on the border. In March, a Hong Kong girl learning at a Japanese college was arrested upon returning to Hong Kong, and formally charged with sedition in June over social media posts she revealed whereas in Japan.
By wielding the specter of entry denials to guests and criminalizing free speech overseas, Hong Kong authorities intention to intimidate essential voices – together with these overseas – into silence.
Given the numerous enterprise and private hyperlinks between Japan and Hong Kong, and that many Japanese nationals and residents move by or stay in Hong Kong, the Japanese authorities ought to push again towards such rising rights abuses in Hong Kong. It ought to converse up about these circumstances, condemn the extraterritorial utility of Hong Kong’s abusive legal guidelines in Japan, and enact a Japanese model of the Magnitsky human rights sanctions regime to focus on human rights violators.
Source: Human Rights Watch