Such was its vastness that it used to be said the sun never set on the British Empire. Since the 18th century, Britons have rejoiced in singing Rule Britannia, a patriotic song that includes the words “Britannia rules the waves”. At one time, thanks to its military might, Britain ruled much else besides, including huge swathes of land on different continents.
Once conquered, the United Kingdom’s territories were controlled by a battery of laws, some of which were draconian. For example, its ubiquitous sedition laws, which were all drafted in similar terms, were regularly deployed to crush dissent and unwelcome opinions. Some of its sedition laws have not only survived the demise of the British Empire but are still in regular usage.
In 1870, for example, in British-controlled India (“the Raj”), the UK placed the sedition law in the Indian Penal Code (s.124A), and it was made an offense to “bring, or attempt to bring, into hatred or contempt, or excite disaffection towards, the Government”. “Disaffection” includes “disloyalty and all feelings of enmity”, and the maximum sentence is life imprisonment. When the British prosecuted Mahatma Gandhi for sedition in 1922, he was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment, and the law continued to be used after independence in 1947.
Indeed, sedition prosecutions have increased by 28 percent under India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi, according to a database compiled by the news website “Article-14”. Since 2014, the authorities have brought over 500 sedition prosecutions. In one case, three Kashmiri Muslim students were prosecuted for celebrating Pakistan’s victory over India in a cricket match in 2021, and although they were acquitted in court, they spent almost six months in detention awaiting trial. According to “Article-14”, 149 people have also been prosecuted for their disrespectful remarks about Modi, who must be grateful the British bequeathed him this tool.
However, India’s liberal use of the sedition law has attracted no criticisms from the British foreign office, its political establishment, or the European Union, either because they realized it was still required, or because nobody wanted to upset Modi, or perhaps both.
In Malaysia, the UK enacted the Sedition Act 1948 to criminalize seditious activity. Primarily designed to combat a communist insurgency, it criminalized speech with a “seditious tendency”, including speech that would “bring into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against” the government or engender “feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races”. It also extends to questioning parts of the Constitution of Malaysia, including the social contract (such as Art.153), which concerns special rights for the bumiputra (Malays and other indigenous people).
Although Malaysia gained its independence in 1957, its British-era sedition law is alive and well.
In 1982, for example, a politician, Mark Koding, was convicted of sedition for arguing in Parliament that the government should close down Chinese and Tamil vernacular schools.
In 2000, Marina Yusoff, the former vice-president of the National Justice Party, was charged with sedition for alleging that the governing United Malays National Organization had provoked the massacre of Chinese during the “13 May Incident” (which saw the deaths of 196 people during race riots).
Thereafter, in 2003, the then deputy prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, threatened to charge those who opposed the government’s education policy with sedition.
The same year, the online publication Malaysiakini was temporarily closed under the Sedition Act because it had published a letter critical of Malay special rights, which likened the youth wing of a government political party to the Ku Klux Klan.
On Aug 27, the former Malaysian prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, pleaded not guilty in the Sessions Court to allegedly making seditious remarks during a recent by-election in Nenggiri state. His alleged crime was to claim that the Malaysian king had not invited him to take the oath as prime minister after the general election, despite getting the support of 115 of the 222 members of Parliament. Although he faces up to three years’ imprisonment and a fine not exceeding RM5,000 ($1,149) if convicted, his prosecution has been downplayed by the Western media. Once again, the UK’s foreign office, its political establishment, its “talking heads”, and the EU have had nothing of any significance to say (as Malaysia is a fellow Commonwealth country, the UK, even if it felt any concerns, which was unlikely, knew better than to rock the boat).
In 1938, the British-controlled Hong Kong government enacted the city’s Sedition Ordinance, which criminalized “hatred or contempt or disaffection” towards the monarch or itself, and this offense was integrated into the Crimes Ordinance in 1971. Under Section 10, it was an offense to utter seditious words, to commit an act with seditious intent, to publish seditious matter, or to possess seditious publications.
A “seditious intent” covered things like bringing the administration of justice into hatred or contempt, raising discontent or disaffection (disloyalty) among the population and promoting feelings of ill-will among different classes in the community, and also an incitement of people to violence.
The offense was punishable, on a first conviction, with a fine of HK$5,000 ($641) and two years’ imprisonment, rising to three years’ imprisonment on a subsequent conviction.
Although the British-era sedition offense, which was still on the statute book in 1997 and continued thereafter, has now been superseded by the sedition law in the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance of 2024, this has not affected preexisting cases.
The British-controlled government in Hong Kong usually used its sedition law at times of social unrest. In 1952, for example, the proprietor, publisher and editor of Ta Kung Pao were accused of sedition for their reporting of the government’s response to the Tung Tau Tsuen squatter fire, and this resulted in imprisonment, fines and a 12-day banning order for the newspaper. Thereafter, in 1967, the publishers and printers of three local newspapers were prosecuted for publishing false and seditious news, publishing articles with the intent to arouse the discontent of police officers, and violating publication controls, and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, with the operation of all three newspapers suspended for six months.
On Aug 29, moreover, two journalists from the former news service, Stand News, its former editor-in-chief, Chung Pui-kuen, and its former acting editor-in-chief, Patrick Lam Shiu-tung, together with Best Pencil HK, the holding company, were convicted under the British-era law of publishing seditious articles (DCC 265/2022). The evidence showed that Stand News had offered a platform for fostering hatred against Beijing and the Hong Kong authorities with the publication of 11 reports between July 2020 and December 2021 and that Chung and Lam had either knowingly approved the illegal articles or been reckless about the consequences of their actions.
The trial judge, Kwok Wai-kin, concluded that by making unfounded allegations against the authorities, promoting resistance and stoking fears over the national security law, Stand News had been used by anti-China elements as a tool for smearing and vilification. It had supported localism, and sought to “facilitate Hong Kong’s self-determination”. He said the press should act in good faith and provide “reliable and precise” information with an “accurate factual basis”, as required by the profession’s ethical standards (a view presumably also shared by the EU, the UK and the United States).
However, in response, the West, although silent over India’s and Malaysia’s sedition prosecutions, suddenly found its voice. Leading the pack was the former Hong Kong governor, Chris Patten, the patron of Hong Kong Watch, the anti-China hate machine. He denounced the “baseless allegations”, and said the verdicts marked “a further sinister turn for media freedom” (while governor he failed to repeal the sedition law, of which he now makes complaint). Not to be outdone, the UK’s minister for the Indo-Pacific, Catherine West, said the “Hong Kong authorities should end politicized prosecutions of journalists” (meaning they should be above the law).
The US state department also muscled in (presumably hoping to distract attention from its complicity in Israeli war crimes in Gaza, which have taken the lives of over 40,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children). Its spokesman, Matthew Miller, said the verdicts “undermine Hong Kong’s once-proud international reputation for openness”, a classic instance of the pot calling the kettle black.
Indeed, Miller can only have made his comments tongue-in-cheek, given his country’s notorious mistreatment of the fourth estate. For example, over many years it ruthlessly pursued the investigative journalist (and WikiLeaks founder) Julian Assange, whose only “crime” was to expose US misconduct in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay (the UK was also complicit, and locked Assange up for over five years in a London prison in dire conditions as the US sought to get its hands on him, without protest from Patten). As Amnesty International explained on June 26, the US “has done untold damage to media freedom, highlighting the need to continue fighting for freedom of expression everywhere”.
Therefore, when it comes to China, a different set of values prevails. Although the Western governments (and the likes of Patten) turn a blind eye to the use of British-era sedition laws in the countries with which they are aligned, they eagerly put the boot in when the same British-era law is applied in Hong Kong. It is hypocrisy writ large, and unworthy of the UK, if not the US. As double standards are always repugnant, the critics have only themselves to blame if China dismisses their comments as politically-motivated and treats their professed concerns with the contempt they deserve.
The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
