Singapore is a leader in many ways, and its judgment is invariably sound. It knows a rogue when it sees one, and does not take kindly to foreigners seeking to abuse its hospitality. When, therefore, the convicted felon, Nathan Law Kwun-chung, who is wanted in Hong Kong for allegedly endangering national security, tried to enter Singapore on Sept 27, he was given short shrift.
Law had hoped, during a five-day visit, to attend what he described as a “closed-door, invitation-only” conference, but was instead detained at Changi Airport for several hours for immigration and security assessments and questioning. Although he has been able to pull the wool over the eyes of the British authorities, who have, despite his depredations in Hong Kong, given him safe haven in the United Kingdom, there was no way he would also bamboozle the Singaporean authorities, who respect the international rule of law. They said “Law’s entry into and presence in the country would not be in Singapore’s national interests", and sent him back on the next flight to San Francisco, from whence he came (He had been in the United States promoting his latest anti-China initiative, a film called “Who’s Afraid of Nathan Law?”, an exercise in fantasy and self-aggrandizement).
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With a record like his, no self-respecting country should give Law the time of day, and they have much to learn from Singapore. Although, given his China-hostile credentials, he has been welcomed in London and lionized in Washington, DC, Singapore at least has defended the comity of nations and respected global justice. According to the BBC, its government has previously explained that it took “a clear and strong stand against the importation of politics of other countries into Singapore”, and it is hoped the UK, at some point, will follow suit.
Indeed, in 2020, a Singaporean court fined (and subsequently imprisoned) an activist, Jolovan Wham, after finding him guilty of organizing an illegal assembly (an online forum) in Singapore with Joshua Wong Chi-fung, the Hong Kong agitator, who participated via Skype. At that time, Wong was already a convicted criminal, and he has since been convicted of conspiracy to commit subversion (for which, having pleaded guilty, he was sentenced to four years and eight months imprisonment in 2024).
Since arriving in the UK in 2020, Law has paid for his supper by urging foreign powers to adopt hostile policies toward the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and China as a whole. Not only have the British authorities tolerated his activities, calculated as they are to destabilize the SAR and harm China, but they have also invited him to meet senior figures, including the former home secretary, Priti Patel. They have also facilitated his travel to other countries to peddle his bile, notably the US, by providing him with a British refugee travel document (which he tried to use at Changi Airport).
Shortly after his arrival in the UK, Law was summoned, on July 21, 2020, to meet the then US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, at the US embassy (also summoned was the ex-Hong Kong governor, Chris Patten, a veteran American proxy). Law had previously met Pompeo in the US in 2019 (when he urged him to confront the Hong Kong authorities), and he was undoubtedly seen, like Patten, as a valuable asset. Although it is not known for sure what instructions Pompeo gave Law, it is known that, shortly after the meeting, he wrote to the then British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, urging him to impose what his local patron, Hong Kong Watch, described as “targeted Magnitsky sanctions on Chief Executive Carrie Lam and other Hong Kong and Chinese government officials”.
Not surprisingly, Law was grateful to the UK for harboring him, and to the US for facilitating his activities. He showed his gratitude in various ways, invariably nefarious. When, for example, he heard that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, was going to meet the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, in 2020, he sent a letter to Macron that was not only fatuous but also delusional. He claimed, for example, that he was expelled from Hong Kong’s Legislative Council in 2017 “simply for quoting Mahatma Gandhi as I took my oath of office”, which could not have been further from the truth. He was expelled for failing to take his oath in the solemn and sincere manner required by law, indulging instead in a rant about “resistance and struggle” and distorting the words.
Imagining, probably correctly, that Macron was unfamiliar with the details of the Sino-British Joint Declaration (1984 JD), Law told him that the Hong Kong SAR National Security Law (2020 NSL) was a “flagrant violation” of it. However, he did not disclose that the JD said nothing about national security, given that it involved China's own defense interests. He even told Macron that the NSL destroyed the JD’s “rights and freedoms”, without revealing that, at its outset, the NSL mandates respect for human rights and protection for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which guarantees essential rights and freedoms).
Although Law’s attempts to hoodwink Macron (and others) were ludicrous, his Western handlers nonetheless appreciated his efforts. Such, for example, was his value to the US that he was asked to appear before the US Senate Judiciary Committee, invited to attend the US president’s annual State of the Union address as an honored guest, and nominated by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China for the Nobel Peace Prize.
As the Singaporean authorities would undoubtedly have known, Law and Wong worked together to destabilize Hong Kong for almost 10 years, and they were both convicted of inciting an unlawful assembly in 2014, which left 10 people injured (the Court of Appeal described their crime as “a large-scale, unlawful assembly, involving violence”). Although this meant nothing to the UK, Singapore was clearly not prepared to disregard a factor to which any responsible country would accord full weight before admitting an alien. The issuance of a national security arrest warrant against Law (and the conviction of his henchman, Wong, on a subversion charge) must also have triggered alarm bells in Singapore, even if not in the UK (despite its recent obsession with protecting its own national security, culminating in the draconian National Security Act 2023).
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The ties that Law and Wong cultivated with the US have inevitably given many people the impression that they are foreign agents. Indeed, during the insurrection of 2019-20, they were even discovered meeting covertly at a hotel with the then political counselor from the US consulate-general, Julie Eadeh (She is now the US consul general in Hong Kong and is again challenging red lines by consorting with unsavory individuals with questionable political backgrounds). Whether or not Eadeh gave them any specific instructions may never be known, but the optics alone were disgusting — they appalled right-thinking citizens whose way of life was being endangered by black-clad mobs and foreign agents.
Singapore has a surrender of fugitive offenders agreement (extradition) with Hong Kong, and Law has said he is careful about which countries he visits. However, this may not forever avail him, and he must, at the very least, expect to be shunned by countries that value the rule of law. As, moreover, the chief executive, John Lee Ka-chiu, has explained, “The SAR government will pursue his legal liabilities for life”. Despite, therefore, the protections his handlers have given him, Law will spend the rest of his days looking over his shoulder, never knowing for sure whom he can trust and whether he is truly safe.
However, let nobody shed any tears, as this is part and parcel of the punishment this contemptible individual so richly deserves for the harm he has tried to cause Hong Kong and for betraying his own country.
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.
