Hongkongers face ever-increasing red lines on a daily basis: legislative and district councils purified, rallies cancelled, Geography exams to include the controversial nine-dash line to mark Chinese sovereignty in the South Sea, textbooks censored, and ‘sensitive’ books removed from library shelves. The latest one is that organ donors should not opt-out.
The Hong Kong government disclosed that there were 5,785 cancellations of organ donation registration in the past five months. It was described as ‘unusual’ as half of the cases were found to be either unregistered or cancelled before, and it did not rule out the possibility that a ‘small number of people intended to disrupt the Centralised Organ Donation Register and create an administrative burden for the government.
This wave of cancellations, which took place after the government announced to consider cross-border organ donations with China, ‘disdains’ the close ties between Hong Kong and China, as claimed by the Hong Kong government, which condemned such acts as ‘irresponsible.’
Pro-democracy-turned-pro-establishment lawyer Ronny Tong Ka-wah said that discussions on the web on this matter might constitute ‘an incitement with intent.’ Chief Executive Lee Ka-chiu went even further. He described such ‘unusual’ cancellations as ‘shameful,’ asking the police to investigate whether such acts were illegal.
But who is being unusual, the public or the government?
First, the claim that ‘half of the cancellation applicants are unregistered or submit repeated applications’ is perplexing, especially against the backdrop of the global digitalization of government services. Obviously, the root cause is the lack of IT expertise, so the system fails to alert users whether they are registered donors when they submit cancellation requests.
Is the government aware of this website design problem? What is the point of condemning the public if the responsibility for this problem rests with the government?
It is clear that the public actually has no way to check whether they have registered with the system. The hotline provided by the Department of Health leads to nowhere but a recorded message ‘Sorry, the mailbox is full.’
Second, the context explains the timing of the wave of cancellations. Last year, the government proposed a permanent cross-border mutual assistance mechanism for organ transplants between Hong Kong and China. Early this year, pro-establishment legislators proposed changing the current opt-in policy of voluntary organ donation to opt-out. Government officials of Hong Kong cannot be unaware of the tightening conflicts between China and Hong Kong over the past decade, and this has been turned into a deadlock that no one can solve, resulting in the 2019 anti-extradition campaign and the ongoing exodus. Against this backdrop of Hongkongers’ unwillingness to be extradited to China, it is not difficult to understand their similar resistance to see their organs being used across the border.
Even industry leaders like Ma Kam-man, president of the Hong Kong Society of Transplantation, said they were yet to know the details of the mechanism. What is the point of making condemnations if the government fails to convince the suspicious public?
Considering the scale of public rallies—two million—in the 2019 campaign, less than six thousand cancellations is really mild.
Given the lack of government response to similar drops in blood and charity donations, its high-profile condemnation of the public “opt-out” from the organ donation register may justify the public’s doubt about who really wants Hongkongers’ organs.
Here, ‘body politics’ is relevant. French thinker Michel Foucault argues that the body is constrained by various power mechanisms and constructed in all aspects—physical, mental, motion, temporal, and spatial so that it will become a ‘docile body.’ A mature civil society helps our bodies become more autonomous and open.
According to a Taiwanese scholar in modern Chinese history, ‘in this revolutionary process, we have seen more political control and physical mobilization than a true liberation movement.’ This observation of modern China is also relevant to Hong Kong now. The autonomy of our own bodies should be respected.
