"Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth," a propaganda law attributed to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Does the second national security law in Hong Kong not affect the "general public" at all?

The phrase "a very small number" has been repeatedly used by the Hong Kong government, backed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to diminish and downplay the impact and outcomes on many occasions, such as:

- The number of people who objected to the then "extradition bill," while over two million people took to the streets;

Elephant legs illusion, variant of Roger Shepard's L'egsistential paradox

- The scale of the brain drain after the imposition of Beijing's national security law, with over 500,000 residents leaving Hong Kong since 2021;

- The arrests under the national security law, as of July 2023, with over 250 people arrested.

And now, the pattern repeats itself. This time, it is with the second national security law, known as Article 23.

The author has first-hand experience with the impact of Article 23, which rushed to become law. Born and bred surrounded by police in Hong Kong, never did she imagine that one day she would be forced to stay away from the city, not to mention that her father, relatives, and several best friends would choose to cut ties with her.

On the 24th of March, the day after Article 23 became law, her father messaged her, asking her to limit their communications and to choose between her life in the UK or her father, who is a retired police officer and worried that their contact would affect his police monthly pension.

Simultaneously, she tried to share this upsetting news with her good friends in Hong Kong, but no one responded to her message until today. She was also told that none of her relatives wanted to have anything to do with her anymore.

The author considered herself one of the 190,000 Hong Kongers in the "general public" who fled Hong Kong to the UK purely to seek a brighter future in a country that values freedom and democracy. As the second national security law became law, she officially lost her father, her relatives, and her good friends in Hong Kong.

Not because she has done anything that violated the first or the second national security law, nor does she have any warrant or bounty on her head, but simply because the fear spread by the CCP is so successful.

"If they can induce fear in you, that's the easiest way to control you in the most effective way," says Jimmy Lai in his 2020 BBC interview.

The propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) goes a long way. We have seen the "education centers," but in reality, those are prisons (or some would call them "concentration camps") to lock up Uyghurs; the tourism videos to promote Xinjiang and to cover up the genocide, the forced labour, and many more human rights violations happening in the area, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights report.

It is time to wake up from the illusion, the propaganda endlessly spread by the CCP, and to come together, stand in solidarity, speak up, and fight for the core values of freedom and democracy before they fade away.

As Benedict Rogers, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Hong Kong Watch, rightly points out in his book - The China Nexus: Thirty Years In and Around the Chinese Communist Party's Tyranny, "the sooner the rest of the world stands up and stops kowtowing to the tyrants in Beijing, the better."

Unveiling the “illusion of truth”