18th Floor, Henley Building,5 Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong Tel: +852 2810 0863 Email: info@iplsa.net/

Dated: 23 March 2021

BY POST & BY EMAIL

The Honourable Ms. Michelle Bachelet Jeria

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Palais des Nations CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Email: InfoDesk@ohchr.org

Dear High Commissioner,

Responses of the International ProBono Legal Services Association concerning Allegations against China in the “2021 World Human Rights Report” issued by Human Rights Watch

INTRODUCTION

The International ProBono Legal Services Association (IPLSA)

1. The IPLSA was founded in June 2018, as a non-profit organization registered in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Hong Kong) of the People's Republic of China (PRC). 2. The core objectives of the IPLSA are: –

i. To provide for or assist in the relief of the poor or necessitous persons for the benefit of the Hong Kong community;

ii. For the advancement of legal education, to provide for or assist in the advancement of education, learning or legal concepts;

iii. For the advancement of legal education, to promote international legal exchanges;

iv. For the advancement of legal education and relief of poverty, to promote and motivate youngsters, including young lawyers, to have a greater vision of the global legal framework, and to provide for or assist in the relief of poverty; and

v. For the advancement of legal education, and to patronize all works and matters in respect of legal education for the young lawyers and students.

Human Rights Watch (HRW)

3. Human Rights Watch is an international, non-governmental organisation that focuses on human rights worldwide, with its headquarters in New York, USA.

4. On 13 January 2021, HRW released a report entitled: “2021 World Human Rights Report” (the Report). The Report covers more than 100 countries, and HRW asserts that its aim is to examine human rights conditions around the world. However, as with their other reports of recent years, the Report has largely targeted China, claiming a human rights deterioration.

5. In its China section, the Report insinuates at the outset that China’s anti-epidemic actions were mere attempts to conceal the outbreak. This is in spite of the fact that China promptly alerted the World Health Organization, and other countries, to the outbreak. The Report even describes the

imposition of lockdowns on Wuhan and several other regions as “acts of authoritarianism”. However, China’s vigorous epidemic prevention and control efforts have been hailed by experts as far-sighted and crucial, with other countries subsequently emulating its example. This slur, however, was simply a foretaste of what follows.

6. The IPLSA finds it extraordinary that what is basically an anti-China rant has been presented to the world as objective reporting. The Report contains extravagant allegations of human rights violations in China, which are defamatory, tendentious and unsubstantiated. It even concludes that “there has been a growing deterioration in China’s human rights situation”, which is far removed from reality, and could have been lifted out of the songbook of any of its geopolitical rivals.

7. As the IPSLA is, in particular, deeply aggrieved at the Report’s misleading picture of the situation in Hong Kong, which will have given observers a wholly false impression, it is left with no choice but to try to put the record straight. As a first step, a media briefing is being scheduled for 23 March 2021 in Room 502 of the Legislative Council Complex, Hong Kong, China.

Xinjiang

8. In recent years, issues related to Xinjiang have been politicized by the HRW, and others. The impression that this is being done in order to discredit China is unavoidable. The report is, frankly, a mishmash of half-baked theories and twisted analyses culled from hostile reports in the Western media. Rumours are treated as facts, slurs are presented as truths, and mountains are made out of molehills. Although catchphrases like “large-scale surveillance”, “forced labour”, “genocide”, and the like are waved around, what is wholly lacking is any attempt at objective reporting.

9. The IPLSA will itself be conducting a fact-finding mission of its own in Xinjiang (and Tibet) in the third quarter of 2021 and will thereafter make its conclusions known to a wider audience, including the HRW, which appears to have relied wholly upon unauthenticated reports and hearsay.

Hong Kong SAR

10.In relation to Hong Kong, the IPLSA is able to confirm from its experiences on the ground that the Report is primarily fiction. In 2019, an insurrection was launched, which injured many people, including police officers, who were routinely attacked with Molotov cocktails and other weapons, caused huge damage to public and private property, caused many people to lose their jobs as businesses closed, turned universities into bomb factories, blocked highways, preventing people from getting to work and children from attending school, and targeted people from other parts of China or with different opinions, including one man whom the protesters killed with a brick and another they set on fire after he argued with them.

11.Although the Hong Kong Police Force, with bravery and professionalism, saved the city from destruction, without, amazingly, any of the fatalities which have arisen recently in police anti-riot operations in, for example, Chile, France, and the United States, this has been consistently disregarded by the HRW, which is wedded to an anti-China agenda. Although the protest movement and its armed wing sought to destroy Hong Kong and provoke an armed confrontation with Beijing, knowing that this would spell the end of one country, two systems, they did not succeed, and the city has largely returned to normal. Instead of congratulating the city upon its survival and the central government for its restraint, HRW has continued to whitewash the protest movement and its political backers, even though they almost destroyed one country, two systems.

12.It is mind-boggling that, in its Hong Kong reportage, the Report completely disregards the Independent Police Complaints Council, which, in May 2020, issued a 999-page report on the recently concluded protests. It largely exonerated the police force of misconduct in relation to the protest-related violence which began on 9 June 2019, and placed responsibility for the horrors which wracked the city squarely at the feet of its perpetrators, the protest movement and its armed wing. That HRW has disregarded the IPCC report, is, the IPLSA considers, proof positive of its determination to suppress the truth and mislead the world.

13.The Report, moreover, misdescribes the National Security Law for Hong Kong, which was promulgated on 30 June 2020, as “the most aggressive assault on Hong Kong people’s freedom since the transfer of sovereignty in 1997”. In fact, this new law has restored peace and stability to the city, ended the widespread violence and the bombings, been welcomed by businesses and the law-abiding public, and enabled our educational institutions to function again. It has, in short, saved one country, two systems from those who wished to destroy it, knowing full well that, if it failed, this would harm China as a whole, which is precisely what they, and their foreign backers wanted.

14. Once again, however, the Report, in its eagerness to demonize the National Security Law, conceals the important truth that the new law is actually human rights heavy. It even stipulates that, in its application, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights applies (Art.4). It also states that the presumption of innocence must be respected, together with other fair trial guarantees (Art.5), although the Report reveals none of this to its readers. It is, in fact, from start to finish, an exercise in deception.

15.Whereas the Report, moreover, mentions that a “pro-democracy” legislator had to be removed from the acting chairmanship of the Legislative Council’s House Committee, it fails to disclose that this was simply because, for seven months, he abused his position by not only preventing a new chair from being elected, but also blocking the passage of any legislation, thereby frustrating the work of government. In many places, this is tantamount to misconduct in public office, yet the Report seeks to place a favourable gloss upon this systemic abuse of parliamentary procedures. Although it highlights the arrest of various prominent people for their alleged involvement in offences against public order, the Report does not mention that they are all entitled to a fair trial according to law and will only be convicted if prosecutors have proved their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

16.Indeed, although the Report mentions that the media tycoon Jimmy Lai is being prosecuted for participation in an allegedly unauthorized march, it ignores his acquittal last year, after a fair trial, of a charge of criminal intimidation, which speaks volumes for HRW’s real agenda. While the Report plays up the disqualification of particular members of the Legislative Council, it fails to explain that this was because they had violated their oaths of office, with some of them even having urged foreign powers to harm Hong Kong and its officials, something that would be viewed as intolerable throughout the world.

17.As the IPLSA is based in Hong Kong, it is able to provide first-hand accounts of recent events. This is reflected in its report in support of these responses and entitled: The Fallacies about Human Rights Watch’s Report and Facts about Human Rights in China.

RESPONESES

18.In light of these matters, the IPLSA concludes that the Report is unprofessional, biased, and politically tainted. In relation to Hong Kong, key incidents are either ignored, or else distorted and misrepresented. Particular events are taken out of context, and no attempt is made to explain the basis of governmental initiatives. Although basic facts could easily have been ascertained, this has not been done, and this raises real concerns over the motivations of its authors. The Report has been compiled in a way designed to place the PRC in the worst possible light, and to portray a false picture of events in Hong Kong, and this must be called out and condemned unreservedly.

19.Whenever situations like this arise, it not only embarrasses its victims, but also brings human rights reporting in general into disrepute. When such reporting is devalued, it leaves the public uncertain as to what can and cannot be believed, and this affects adversely even genuine areas of concern. The IPLSA, therefore, invites the United Nations to have no truck with the Report, to urge HRW to aspire to objective reporting in future, and to use its good offices to ensure that NGO’s operating in the area of human rights do not debase their operations by mis-reporting of this type.

20.If the IPLSA can be of any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@iplsa.net.

Yours sincerely,

INTERNATIONAL PROBONO LEGAL SERVICES ASSOCIATION LIMITED