When I heard the dismaying, but not unexpected, news that three young Hong Kong democracy activists — Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and Ivan Lam — had been sentenced to prison, my mind immediately returned to an evening almost two years ago, to the day. On that night, the Lantos Foundation awarded Wong our highest honor, the Lantos Human Rights Prize, in absentia. At the tender age of 22, he was already a prominent leader in the pro-democracy movement and had earned the ire of Beijing, to the point that he was forbidden to travel outside of Hong Kong.
The Lantos Prize was accepted on his behalf by Chow and Nathan Law, two fellow founders of the pro-democracy party Demosisto. No one in that room will ever forget their eloquence as they warned of darker days ahead for Hong Kong and admonished us all to never take our freedoms for granted, nor forget them in their struggle.
Chow celebrated her birthday in Washington that year — free to travel outside of Hong Kong and still free to speak out for democracy and the rule of law. Fast forward to Dec. 3, 2020, when she marked her 24th birthday in prison. Wong will serve more than 13 months, a stunningly unjust penalty for a brave young man in his prime.
The prison sentences of these activists, along with the news that pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai has been detained, throw into sharp relief the terrible decline of any semblance of democracy, justice and autonomy in Hong Kong. Indeed, Hong Kong may represent the most visible battlefield in the fight against China’s increasingly brutal repression at home and its growing efforts to export its authoritarianism abroad.
But it is not the only battlefield. If the United States is not willing to take a stand on behalf of Hong Kong, China will be emboldened to expand its repression of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, the Buddhists in Tibet and, of course, its massive censorship for all Chinese through its notorious Great Firewall.
President-elect Joe Biden was present on the night when Agnes Chow and Nathan Law accepted the Lantos Prize for Joshua Wong, and I imagine that their words left as deep an impression on him as they did on us all. The responsibility to stand with Hong Kong, and against Chinese authoritarianism, will now rest with him and the incoming administration.
Fortunately, important tools are in place to assist the Biden administration with this vital task. The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act authorizes the use of Magnitsky-style sanctions against those complicit in repression of basic freedoms and rendition of Hong Kongers to the mainland. These should be used in a determined fashion by the new administration, which also should consider extending President Trump’s executive order ending the special trading status that Hong Kong has enjoyed under U.S. law.
Congress has just passed legislation that will empower the president to kick companies off American stock exchanges if they fail to fully comply with U.S. auditing rules. The Biden administration should be ready to apply this law aggressively against Chinese companies and should make it clear that as long as the Chinese government continues to crush freedom in Hong Kong, their largest businesses will not enjoy unfettered access to American capital markets.
Furthermore, Biden’s administration should actively call for the release of Wong, Chow and Lam, and it should go even further — granting asylum to the three just convicted and signaling that the United States will act favorably on asylum requests for those fleeing political repression in Hong Kong.
As powerful as the Chinese Communist Party may appear from the outside, its growing repression belies an underlying fragility and fear — fear of the free flow of information, fear of the free exercise of religion and conscience, fear of dissent, fear of democracy and, above all, fear of the power of its own people. Hong Kong threatens the Chinese government precisely because it has been a small island of freedom far too close to the mainland for comfort. The Hong Kongers know the inestimable value of freedom because they have had it; that is why they are brave enough to fight for it. But they will not prevail against China if they fight alone.
It would be naïve to think that a determined human rights policy vis-à-vis China will be either easy or painless — standing up for human rights rarely comes without a cost. But if brave young activists such as Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow can risk their freedom and their futures to fight for important universal values, then the United States must be willing to do hard things to support them in this fight.
Katrina Lantos Swett, Ph.D., J.D., is president of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights & Justice, which leads a coalition of human rights groups committed to opening the internet in closed societies. She is a human rights professor at Tufts University and the former chair of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom.