More than 1,000 young people lured into violence in the 2019 civil unrest have joined a rehabilitation program involving visits to the Chinese mainland – and the results are extraordinary. The program has an incredibly low re-offending rate of just 0.4 per cent, compared to Hong Kong’s overall 22.4 per cent rate. James Ockenden reports
ANTI-CHINA AGITATORS have wasted no time spinning the Hong Kong government’s latest olive branch to riot arrestees as “forced re-education”.
But the new “Positive Guidance” program, which sees young arrestees from the 2019-20 riots offered the chance to wipe the slate clean, is a very welcome initiative from the Security Bureau and should be celebrated as as humane and empathetic way to deal with some of the youngsters caught up in 2019-20 unrest.
I PROPOSED AN AMNESTY
Back in 2018, I proposed an amnesty programme for those convicted around “Occupy Central” and other anti-China movements. This seems naïve on reflection, given the dark forces proven to be lurking within many of those movements, but the idea was for reconciliation to open a dialogue and rescue those who had fallen into the honey-tongued trap of black-clad violence.
The proposal fell on stony ground and I didn’t consider it wise to push the idea further after 2019. Publicly, at least, compassion for fringe cases was not a priority while urgent national security issues raged.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Yet I knew from friends at the Correctional Services Department that the government was, behind the scenes, taking rehabilitation of convicted 2019 youth seriously.
One fellow playgroup dad who worked at a prison had only good things to say about many of the imprisoned 2019 youngsters and their attitudes to self-improvement: his stories, and those from others, did not tally with the tales of prisoner life shared from outside Hong Kong nor with the angry missives of a few hard-core activists.
Not much of the rehabilitation work was public until recently. But by the end of February, a total of 1,325 “black-clad violence”-related convicted persons had voluntarily joined Project PATH, a rehabilitation programme yielding an incredible 0.4 percent recidivism rate (against Hong Kong’s overall 22.4 percent rate).
And while the government worked to extend rehabilitation “after the prison walls” for released convicts, work was also afoot to tackle another group “before the prison walls”–those young people arrested during black-clad protests but not yet charged.
LED BY A POPULAR SINGER
That low-key campaign became the Positive Guidance programme now going viral around the world after singer Hins Cheung King-hin announced he would lead mentorship groups of arrestees to the Chinese mainland for rehabilitation tours.
The new voluntary programme, building on Project PATH concepts, offers welcome relief for the thousands of youngsters trapped in the limbo of being arrested in 2019-20 but not yet charged.
An estimated 5,000 youngsters can voluntarily join the programme, learning Chinese history, value systems, and techniques for rebuilding family relations.
ARE THEY ‘RE-EDUCATION CAMPS’?
Critics who claim this is forcing young people into “re-education camps” are missing the point. First, of course, these are entirely voluntary. But more importantly, the education is hardly more arduous than a driver education programme and, given the trade-off – a dropping of potentially serious criminal proceedings – it must be viewed as an olive branch for reconciliation rather than anything nefarious.
Critics also say arrestees are considered innocent under Hong Kong law, until proven guilty, and therefore “rehabilitation” requires some acknowledgement of guilt.
I would draw a parallel here with Hong Kong’s apology laws. These were introduced to allow parties to apologize to each other without admitting guilt or liability. Before those laws were introduced, saying sorry could be an expensive legal mistake. Likewise with rehabilitation of these arrestees, we need to get away from strict “guilty/innocent” labels if we are to achieve any reconciliation.
Of course it’s not just the anti-China elements calling foul on the rehabilitation schemes. The more hawkish critics will say these youngsters were arrested for a reason and they should pay the price.
YOUNG PEOPLE ACTED ON IMPULSE
Well, first of all, a fair number caught up during the social unrest were regular folk, curious about the unfolding events. At protests and riots, I saw some very bad people I hope are off the streets for a long time.
But I also saw a lot of kids who’d never been, for example, on a traffic-free highway before and couldn’t quite believe the strange freedom that brings. Police scooping up lunchtime protest offenders would find they had netted an indiscriminate mix of truly deplorable violent rioters with petrol bombs and curious locals enjoying a spectacle.
As a Security Bureau spokeswoman told me in response to questions on the rehabilitation scheme, many young people acted on impulse and were “unwittingly caught by the law. Many of them deeply regretted their actions.”
But secondly, many of those arrestees have been on police bail for seven years now, and that’s no picnic.
BEING ‘IN THE SYSTEM’ IS STRESSFUL
I know from personal experience the pain here, even without a charge. For some of those youngsters, any excitement or glamor at being handcuffed and bundled into the back of a police van in front of hundreds of thirsty foreign photographers would have dissipated extremely quickly as all the emotion, drama and nuance of the incident would be reduced to relentless paperwork.
The weight of being “in the system” is hard to bear. Technically, under the law, you’re innocent… but it doesn’t feel that way when you’re spending every fourth Sunday reporting to a police station, and I admire those youth who went through that without spiralling into more trouble.
And so, we should celebrate Positive Guidance and support all parties in achieving something we might have though impossible back in 2019.
The author is a Hong Kong-based journalist.
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