Thank you to each and every one of you for being here with us today to discuss how Hong Kong's National Security Law has decimated the Hong Kong freedom. The Beijing-implemented National Security Law came into effect in Hong Kong about a year ago on June 30th, 2020. One year later today, Hong Kongers have lost the rights of 10 public protests and assemblies. About a hundred pro-democracy activists are arrested. Apple Daily, Hong Kong's largest pro-democracy publication, has been shut down and numerous political organizations have been dissolved. Today, the presenters of the roundtable are composed with prominent young politicians of Korea, of a formal politician of Hong Kong, a top consultant of Apple Daily, and a young democratic campaigner of Hong Kong. Congresswoman Yoo Ho-jung is the host of this roundtable here today. She is from the Justice Party, and the chairperson of the conservative party, Lee Jun-suk, is attending as well. Good morning. I am Yoo Ho-jung, a member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea. I remember having a virtual meeting with Jo Xiaowong and Nathan Lau last year in commemoration of the June 10th Democratic struggle in Korea of 1987. I had given my word to bear witness for the people of Hong Kong, but as if to show that such meetings are in vain, China passed the Hong Kong National Security Law in only 15 minutes. Many people were arrested after the imposition of the NSL. Politicians have been stripped of their parliamentary mandates, and their political party has been dissolved. Many, including young activists, have chosen to go on exile, and those who decided to remain in Hong Kong have little choice but to live in silence. Recently, we heard the concerning news of the closing of Apple Daily, which had steadfastly represented the voice of the Hong Kong people. I saw a photo of people embracing each other in front of the Apple Daily office with the last issue of the newspaper in their hands. It demonstrated that although the newspaper is no more, people's aspiration for democracy remains as passionate as ever. Only 40 years ago, the situation in Korea was not so different from that of Hong Kong. Many people were arrested and sacrificed by the country's violence. Nevertheless, there were people who did not give up their resistance. And because of these people, we have managed to achieve democracy. And I believe that you are these people for Hong Kong. I look forward to listening to your words today and seeking a way to work together with you to usher in the spring in Hong Kong. I extend to you my warmest welcome and thanks for joining us this morning. Before we begin, I would like to introduce to you a very special guest that we have with us today. And he is very interested in the democratic movement in Hong Kong. And in 2009, he was in Hong Kong and he actually participated in the movements there. And when he heard that we were holding this round table this morning, he was very interested and wanted to take part in it. And so I'm very honored to introduce to you Honorable Mr. Lee Jun-suk, the chairman of the People Power Party. I'd like to say hello to everyone online participating in this round table. As mentioned, I am the chairperson for the major opposition party in Korea, People Power Party. And I participated in the 2019 protest against the people power party. And I participated in the 2019 protest against the Hong Kong police in August and September. I am participating in this session because I was so surprised by the fact that the Hong Kong government is actually trying to suppress a freedom of speech by suppressing Apple Daily recently. Surprisingly, the Korean government today, Korean ruling party is also trying to pass the new media bill that suppresses freedom of speech. I'll definitely be on the same line with you people against cruelties happening in Hong Kong. I mentioned the word cruelty because last week I had an interview with Bloomberg and I used the word cruel to describe what is going on there in Hong Kong. And recently the Chinese Communist Party was really upset with my usage of the word cruel. But I cannot find a better way to describe the situation there from what I actually saw. So I definitely want to get recent updates on the Hong Kong issue today. And I have a lot of questions for you. I'm really looking forward to get great information today. And as a pioneering nation in the region, in the field of democracy, Korea has an obligation to help the people of Hong Kong and spread democracy in the region. We'll definitely be helping you guys throughout the democratization process. Now we will start with Ted Hui, a former legislator of Hong Kong. He will be making a statement. Thank you so much for inviting me and giving me giving us these opportunities in Hong Kongers and those who care about Hong Kong to discuss Hong Kong situations. And I do value and treasure every moment that I have to talk about Hong Kong to state our case. Because Hong Kong is experiencing a really, really tough time. So I'll start off by giving an overall general overview of the Hong Kong situation now. And my analysis of all my expectations of what is going to happen in Hong Kong in the near future. So this month, July marked the 24th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to China. And traditionally on July the first, people would go on to the streets, take it to the streets for rally, for district demonstrations, for freedom and democracy in Hong Kong. And especially traditionally for universal suffrage, one-man-one-vote democracy that we aimed for the past decades. But now it's universal suffrage is a goal that is very far away. It's very remote. It seems even sarcastic to even talk about in Hong Kong. Because for the last two years, we've totally lost our freedom in Hong Kong and all our fundamental rights. They are totally decimated by the CCP regimes in Hong Kong. And now I don't think we will ever have any strict demonstrations already in Hong Kong. So the first of July and July in Hong Kong is no longer a day for rally, for freedom and democracy. It's more like remembrance of grievance of losing freedom in Hong Kong. It reminds me also of my experience in 2017. At that time I visited South Korea. I went to Guangzhou with the delegation. And then I participated in the remembrance events in the cemetery for the Guangzhou uprising. And I remember listening to the President's speech and how I felt connected. That a country, of course, with the history of struggle towards democracy and how people sacrificed. And yes, I believe Hong Kong is experiencing a similar moment and facing police brutality and all the persecutions by the regime. So I'll also start off by explaining the real life scenarios and situations and how Hong Kongers has gone through our past two years. In 2019-2020. So I left Hong Kong at the end of 2020. And I can still recall the last three months before I left for the three consecutive months. I've been arrested and I have police raids to my home. Sudden raids in the mornings at 6 p.m. Arrested me and questioned me, laid charges against me, handcuffed me, sent me directly to the police stations. And then I stayed there overnight and directly to court. So luckily I got bail for the three charges for the three consecutive months. But luckily, many of my comrades and my parliamentarian colleagues, my freedom fighter friends in the streets, they couldn't get bailed. So you can imagine in days like that, any freedoms that if you ever enjoyed could be your last. There can be no chance of you saying goodbye to your family, to your loved ones. And the next time you see the arrested person in freedom, maybe in years or decades. That's what's been happening to my friends, my parliamentarians, colleagues, my comrades among us. We're losing them one by one. And it's quite a heavy and painful experience. And of course, not to mention that how we lost the whole newspaper, media groups and Mark is going to talk about that for sure. And many journalists are being persecuted, being criminally charged and forced to leave their position as journalists. And of course, not to mention how we lost our judicial independence, judiciary that Hong Kong people used to trust in Hong Kong. Now it's so interfered by the regimes with the newly introduced national security law. So the national security law that's been introduced a year ago marks a brutal paradigm shift in Hong Kong. Distorting the individualists, right-based norms and virtues Hong Kong once had. Switching Hong Kong into a complete police state. Ruling Hong Kong with fear and deterrence and a typical totalitarianism. So nowadays, the CCP, I would say, is the biggest enemy of freedom and democracy that's been running Hong Kong. And I'd also say that the CCP Hong Kong regimes and China regimes is a threat, not only to Hong Kong, but to the whole world. So it's my determination that Hong Kong's goal shouldn't be just going back and to revert Hong Kong back to how it was. Because Hong Kongers already have enough of unfulfilled promises and lies of the CCP regimes in Hong Kong. So our goal is no longer, I would say, one country, two systems. I personally don't buy it. Hong Kongers don't buy it. We don't trust that anymore. I believe that our goal is to have CCP step down from power, to have the regime step down from power. Then Hong Kongers, the diaspora, people like me, dissidents living in exiles will go home together in a revived Hong Kong in glory. And let's not forget how Hong Kongers survived all the police brutality. I've personally experienced all kinds of police weapons, all thousands and 10,000 rounds of tear gas, pepper sprays, water cannons, police brutality. I've witnessed firsthand how young people being brutally beaten up. So my expectations of Hong Kong in the near future is that there will be more and more dissidents being locked up. And not only politicians, but all activists. And it's still happening on a daily basis, day by day. It breaks my heart to read Hong Kong news every day, seeing all the young people at their teenage, at their early 20s, they are being locked up. And I can also expect more media group to close down, forced to close down like Apple Daily, because the regime can no longer tolerate any dissent, any criticism, and more and more journalists being persecuted, being criminally charged and put to jail, and more professions being disqualified or punished. And we can see, for example, teachers now being heavily persecuted. They are disqualified for just using wrong textbooks that support freedom and democracy, or for the speech over the Internet on social media regarding how they support freedom and democracy. Now those teachers are being complained of and they are punished for losing their qualifications permanently for life, they cannot be teachers anymore. So this is what's happening in different professions in Hong Kong.  That's what the regime is doing to professionals. So there are different things that can be done internationally. And as a person in exile speaking for Hong Kong's freedom and democracy on advocacy, of course I stress that sanctions by different countries can be powerful. Of course sanctions wouldn't change Hong Kong's regimes or Beijing's behavior immediately. But I still argue that it's important because sanctions is the gesture that free countries will not tolerate these kinds of persecutions anymore. And free countries will not live up to the so-called new international orders and values created by the CCP regimes that represents oppressions to freedoms. So sanctions is also reassurance to Hong Kongers and for those who are suffering from persecutions by the CCP regimes. And it's not only for Hong Kongers but also for Uyghurs, for the Taiwanese, for the Myanmar. The Myanmar is the military government supported by the CCP regimes. So it's also a reassurance for those who are suffering and to recognition of their cause. And also it's a reassurance for the allies of the free countries in the world that they are now joining hands together against the repression, against the threats that CCP is spreading globally. So it's important. So it's also a sign that free countries, I mean the CCP, will not benefit from the existing world order as a business as usual. So I strongly argue for sanctions from free countries against officials in Beijing and in Hong Kong for their wrongdoing, for their penetration to human rights. Of course, what more can be done, of course, lifeboat plans, just Hong Kongers are now in danger. Quite many young protesters, they need a safe place to go to so that they can continue their fight, their cause. And so, for example, the UK has been providing lifeboat schemes and tailor-made for Hong Kongers' BNO schemes. And I wish that places like countries like where I am, Australia, and first Canada, the Five Eyes, were not limited to those. But Asian countries, Korea, Japan, I hope that they can look seriously into the issues and to receive Hong Kongers from the terrorists of CCP. And I would say that Hong Kongers is very adaptive. They have all the advantages of contributing to the society while continuing their advocacy for Hong Kong. So to be a contribution to those countries, I think it will be a win-win. Of course, what more can be done by free countries, a more boycotting approach, an isolating approach towards Beijing in terms of China policy. A boycott can be diplomatic and can be economic. So we've been to Hong Kongers with other ethnic minorities persecuted by the CCP. For example, we are calling for a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in 2022. And I think that will be a very effective measure in maximising the pressure on Beijing. And so finally, what Hong Kong diaspora is doing now, of course, Hong Kongers are getting together. And we believe that even though we are overseas, we still are in lines. We still join hands. We still walk abreast. We get together. We maintain our language and culture. We tell our stories. We state our case to civil societies and different professions in our respective countries. And from that, from the bottom, we make our influence and we meet parliamentarians, government officials, and we hope to be a bigger stakeholder. And we hope that free countries and not only governments but the people will understand our situations so that they value not only the economic interests of their respective countries. I hope that they value the universal value of human rights and freedom and democracy. And that's the only thing that we are after. So that's been these are the things that we've been doing internationally and in our respective countries. And I again, I thank you for this opportunity for letting us to speak so that I understand more of Hong Kong situations. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have and go to any debate so that Hong Kong's case can be told in more details. I'll pause here and leave the time for other speakers. Thank you very much. Now, Mark Simon, a top consultant and a right-hand man of Apple Daily's Magnate, Jimmy Lai will be making a statement. Good morning. Thanks everybody for having me for your valuable time and the honor of speaking here today. As I'm just introduced, I'm Mark Simon. I'm currently in the New York, New Jersey area. To give you some background, I spent the last 21 years working for Jimmy Lai and holding senior positions in our media divisions, undertaking everything from general manager of Apple Daily to group director of the entire group. The entire time of those 21 years, I worked directly for Mr. Lai and he describes me often as either his assistant or as his, either his assistant or as his deputy, depending on what he's just discussing that day. There's really no aspect of the Apple Daily situation. I can't discuss and I look forward to questions at a later date. Currently, I would also add, and this is what I'm leading into, I've also wondered Hong Kong, like the other gentlemen up here with me, on various criminal counts related to Apple Daily's Hong Kong businesses, as well as two national security charges, one that was actually outlined in public last week against Finn and I during a court hearing for Andy Lee. I bring this up not as some badge of honor, but in part to show that the shuttering of Apple Daily was not just about the closure of a free press, but rather the destruction of a business, Hong Kong's open markets and rule of law. I was not targeted because I'm some important figure in the democracy movement. The other gentlemen here joining us, they're important. Not only because I was a journalist, but rather I was a key player in the business of the company. The goal with me was to disrupt the business. A proper and fully functioning society requires a free press that is operating in an open and free market. No market is free if it is dependent on the government for its revenues, for the revenues of our media. Certainly there's a place for public broadcasters, the BBC and PR in Korea, there's public broadcasters, nonprofits, and I'm wide open, anybody can basically have a publishing platform in my world. Yet it's impossible for there to be press freedom if the government controls all the funding and the revenues of the media. To paraphrase the old Russian linen, the communist leader, if you want to control the newspapers, you control the paper. The Hong Kong government has added their own version to linen's approach. Not only have they attacked the business of Apple Daily and our revenues, but the individuals and the suppliers and vendors who work with us. In other words, making it impossible for a free press to operate. Apple Daily was put out of business by the government of Hong Kong at the direction of the Communist Party. It's kind of ironic that as soon as my boss Jimmy saw the introduction of the extradition treaty in 2018-19, he made it very clear the treaty was going to be used to target one group, Apple Daily, to bring our, if our journalists write something, bring them to China. If our business people do something, bring them to China. When the extradition treaty failed and the national security law was introduced, once again Jimmy said, well, they're coming back for a second try. And maybe we have two years. It looked like we only had one, as we can see. Now, I think most of you are familiar with the story of how they cracked down on a free press in Hong Kong. But quickly, the first target was the public broadcaster, RTHK, which is the government television agency. Long history of independence, long history of non-interference from government. Within months after the national security law, the government had full control by management changes and just firing some reporters. Apple Daily was a bit harder for them because Apple Daily operates in the marketplace. So this is the real point that one of the things that I think people have kind of missed from closing the free press. For the past 10 years, Apple Daily, if you advertise in Apple Daily, you were guaranteed 100% to be contacted by the Chinese and urged to not to advertise. But in fairness, we did have a lot of companies, including some Korean company who stayed with us. But after July 1st, 2020, we saw it coming. There was no way anybody could stay with us. The threat was too great to the employees. So what we did and worked fantastically is we moved to a subscription system. The subscription system in Hong Kong, we have over 600,000 subscribers. At one point in time when we opened up, we had close to a million. Hong Kong Apple Daily is a viable company. It's incredibly important. The Hong Kong Apple Daily was cash flow positive. And the day they shut us down, we had over 50 million US dollars in the bank that was certified to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and acknowledged by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In fact, even today, there's close to that amount that's still sitting in the bank and the company could still be operating. So what happened is when they couldn't beat us through other ways, they just cut off everything. It's illegal for banks to handle the funds of Apple Daily. It's illegal for us to even pay the Apple Daily employees for the National Security Act. So what they did is they used economic measures to crush the free press. And that's really quite important. Remember, they came in with police and raided us with over 300 officers twice and walked away. But behind the scenes, they were contacting the banks. They were contacting our landlords. They were putting pressure on our vendors. And at the end of the day, they were arresting our senior executives and tragically basically making these individuals stop working. The CCP now owns all the media and major media in Hong Kong. There are still some small, small players out there. And they do valiant work and they work very hard. But the fact of the matter is in a major society, mass media matters. The big media companies really do set the tone and the tenure for ideas, links, and breaths in the marketplace. So what has happened to Hong Kong is basically the government controls every major media outlet, mass media outlet. They control it through either direct ownership or the fact is they have their probation cronies who control everything. Now, one of the things about Apple Daily being crushed that I think I have to make clear and I'll divert from my comments for a second is, Jimmy Lai, my boss always talks about rights and freedoms as baskets. In other words, we protect the freedom of religion because we know people who oppress the freedom of religion will also oppress the freedom of the press. We know a dictator who represses the freedom of the press will also play with the markets. We know somebody who will get involved in education will also get involved in the markets are in ways of life. So Hong Kong is actually the perfect example of how the CCP moves to crush organizations and ideas they don't like. Essentially, a free press organization with journalists sitting out there had a frontal assault on the rights of the press through the arrest of some of our journalists and some of our editors. And, but more effectively, they undermined the business and the free market. So in Hong Kong, one of the things that shows how destructive destroying a free press is is they've shattered the rule of law and going after us. They've stripped Mr. Lai of he's we're a public listed company and they just came in and they stripped Mr. Lai of his shareholding rights. He owns 71% of the company, which is the reason why I have a consultant title right now for Mr. Lai, but not for the company because he has no more voting rights in his own company. They essentially locked up editors targeted senior business executives, myself included, and others and moved them out of the business. And then finally, the worst thing in my mind, what they've done is they now set an environment where they control all the news. And that's a very important point for people to look at. Yes, there is the international press there. There's Bloomberg. There's the New York Times. There's international journalists, but they are not solely concerned with the government and the daily facts that go on in Hong Kong. I think as Asia starts to look at this, this is a model that Asia needs to consider how China is going to spread. For example, inside Korea, I can assure you there are Chinese language newspapers. Who are the owners of those newspapers? Who do they represent? What are their views? Who do they back? What are they mobilizing in Korean society? What are they trying to do? Who are the Chinese business associations in Korea? What are they doing? What are they talking about? Because the point is in Hong Kong, essentially, we have seen the undermining of civil society, rule of law, and a free press. They work all at once. Everything comes together in one way, and they destroy it all at once. The other thing, and I think Koreans actually know this very, very well. The worst thing about dealing with dictators is, I have to say, after watching the Hong Kong people for having lived there for over 25 years, you've never seen a people more resilient. You've never seen a people really beat the government on a regular basis all the time until this very last move. And that's because as tyrants, at the end of the day, they get as many bites at the apple as they need. In other words, they just keep coming back and coming back. And my fear is that the rest of Asia and other places are going to be caught off guard as China starts to spread the ideas of the CCP around Asia and start trying to make them legitimate. They're going to do the same thing that they've done with the Hong Kong media with overseas Chinese media. And it's something that I could, that's the only thing really I could ever argue for in Korea is I think Koreans need to take a real look at Chinese propaganda efforts in South Korea. I know that doesn't affect a lot of things in Hong Kong right now, but I'm primarily focused on the media and the information war. Because the point is in Korea where people have a strong and natural belief in democracy, if there's not ways for the democracy movement abroad to at least be heard by the elites and the intellectuals in Korean society. And a lot of time that comes up from what we call ethnic media, in other words, Chinese language media. Then it becomes very difficult for the Korean people to understand what's really happening inside places like Hong Kong and China. I'll leave it at that. If you have any questions about Apple Daily, I'll happily answer. Now it's Mr. Finlau Stern, a 28-year-old pro-democracy activist and a founder of Hong Kong Liberty. A group of pro-democracy Hong Kongers organized an exhibition in Seoul last month as part of the Hong Kong Beewater 2021 Global Campaign. Being one of the co-initiators of the campaign, I had wished I could fly to Seoul to support the fans in person and connect with more Koreans. This is therefore a particularly exciting opportunity here today to be able to meet you at least virtually and exchange ideas with the Korean parliament and civil society. So as I mentioned by the host, I am the founder of the Hong Kong Liberty team, one of the 10,000 arrestees and one of the Hong Kong activists in exile wanted under the Hong Kong National Security Law NSL. As Mark has mentioned, he and I have been charged against the NSL and our names have been repeatedly brought up in the trials against Jimmy Lai and other pro-democracy figures. There has been a long story behind how I ended up an activist in exile. So before becoming an activist, I was a professional in the construction industry and have worked with Samsung in a number of infrastructure projects across different countries before. Back in 2019, a point introduction of the extradition bill, which sparked the most recent pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. I found several action groups and laid down the groundwork for the international line of the movement with no network and resources to start with at the time. But as these were built, I had subsequently launched different initiatives on both the international and local lines of Hong Kong's fight against the CCP. My work included the organization of global news advertisement campaigns and multiple rounds of global rallies, as well as arranging for foreign prime mentions to visit Hong Kong. I also proposed the doctrine and strategy of Lam Tao, which is a Cantonese-land term for the if we burn, you burn with us sentiment, which you may be familiar with from the Hunger Games, the movie. So what is the reason why Hong Kongers are keen to burn with the CCP, even when it implies self-destruction? In essence, Hong Kongers have been burned by the CCP since the 1960s, while almost all former colonies around the world were granted the right of self-determination under the United Nations. Hong Kongers were deprived of such a basic right and any comprehensive democratic reforms due to Beijing's militant threat and pressure. While still Britain was forced to hand over Hong Kong to China in 1997, although Hong Kong should in theory be protected by the UN-locked Sino-British Joint Declaration for 15 years, we have instead witnessed the accelerating dismantlement of Hong Kong's autonomy, democracy, and people's civil liberties. While Jimmy Lai has been put into jail, a number of Apple Daily's executive directors and journalists were arrested three weeks ago under the NSL. The assets of the media group have also been frozen without any trial to warrant the penalty. This cash flow cut-off resulted in the shutdown of the largest pro-democracy mass media and the last pro-democracy paper print in Hong Kong. There are three pillars to any international financial centre. First, the rule of law. Second, the protection of pirate property rights, and third, press freedom. Under the CCP total tyrannium rule, Hong Kongers have lost nearly all kinds of civil liberties and the rule of law. With the demise of Apple Daily, it is clear that Hong Kong no longer qualifies as an international financial centre. All businesses in Hong Kong are literally hostages in the hands of the CCP. It is therefore no longer safe for foreign countries, including Korea, to invest and conduct business in the city. Korean enterprises should seriously consider retreating from the city before it becomes too late. But then, many of you in Korea may ask, is Hong Kong doomed for real? Is there anything that Korea could help or do to help? Well, it may sound perestosical, but I believe Hong Kong can be reborn and rise again someday. And we, the Hong Kongers, are probably on the right path. Between the 1980s and 2019, all democracies in the world, especially the US, used to adopt the so-called engagement policy as the underpinning principle to their foreign policies towards China. However, it only ended up with the rise of the total tyrannium giants who has mastered the dark arts of infiltration and control of other countries. This regime has additionally been convicted of the crime of genocide. Today following our final awakening to the CCP's heavy hand in 2019, we continue on our journey outwards to pass on our hard-earned learnings to the world. Fortunately, the world seems to also be waking up after 2019, and the paradigm has gradually shifted from the engagement policy to a tough China policy, thereby starting to contain Beijing's infiltration and regional hegemony. What the international community, including Korea, has to do is to continue moving away from feeding and over relying on the bloodstained Chinese monies. Only by starving the CCP economically, with measures such as collective sanctions as mentioned by Ted, may we have a fair chance to prevent hot walls and encroachment by such an aggressive regime. Looking at the collapse of the USSR, I believe history can repeat if we jointly adopt the right strategy. With the CCP collapse, Hong Kong, Macau, Tibet, and Xinjiang will be freed. Many Hong Kongers have said, we are going through hell. I used to agree. But I am now less pessimistic. This is because whenever I feel lost about the future of Hong Kong, I would look into world history for guidance and enlightenment. A country that has always inspired me is Korea, especially with the Korean pro-democracy movement in the 1980s and the Guangzhou uprising. There are so many similarities between Guangzhou uprising and the ongoing Hong Kong uprising. Although I would not pretend to be an expert in Korean history, both peoples have faced through crackdowns by despotic regimes, gruesome police brutality, endless political trials, and the downfall of free press. It took me three days to finish watching a Korean movie called 987, when the day comes. As the movie invoked many of my traumatic memories, and I have had to pause because of the pain of being made to imagine the dark hours ahead. Having said that, with courage, strategy, and determination, I trust that Hong Kongers and our land will be free in the world. As with Korea, the day must come. So I'd like to say thank you to the other presenters and hosts for providing the venue for this important dialogue. Our group, the Soul-Based Transitional Justice Working Group, formed in 2014 to focus on doing documentation for human rights abuses actually in North Korea, but specifically using more advanced technologies to record these abuses. Our main projects, we have three of them. We have our flagship mapping project, which looks to identify the locations of killing sites and human remains in North Korea. Our footprints project, which records and publicizes information on abductees taken by the North Korean states. And then finally our global project, which looks to support documentation groups and human rights advocates in other countries. And so it's from these contexts that I'd like to speak a little bit more broadly about the zoomed out long-term view of justice issues facing Hong Kong from the transitional justice perspective. Much of this might be a little bit intangible or abstract at the present moment. I do think it is useful to think of what justice mechanisms could look like in the future to help focus efforts in the present. So to do this, I'll briefly explain what exactly the transitional justice perspective entails, then talk about the role of civil society in documentation specifically before finally offering some thoughts on how Hong Kong can be supported from Korea. So broadly defined transitional justice refers to how countries emerge from periods or conflict of repression and how they then address large scale or systematic human rights violations that are so severe or widespread that they fall outside of what the normal justice system is designed to handle. And we often talk about four or five pillars of transitional justice. So firstly, accountability. Criminal prosecutions often form the foundation of the transition that happens in a society. So these can be criminal prosecutions directed towards high level prosecutions or actually the day-to-day working level abusers of those who actually commit the abuses themselves. These efforts are usually calibrated to the local context. So they can range quite widely from Rwanda's Gaka courts to international efforts such as the ICC, the ICJ, and often even hybrid efforts like was seen in Cambodia. First, local justice mechanisms can also be created in places where that's possible. The second pillar is reform. So this is where guaranteeing non-recurrence of abuses or violence comes into play. And so this includes reforms of laws and institutions including the police, judiciary, military and military intelligence. Truth-seeking is the third pillar or fact-finding that these processes look into human rights violation and are usually non-judicial bodies. They're varied but often look at not only events but also their causes. The most famous one example of this would be the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from South Africa. These are important pieces where the general public can interface with the work of what the transition is actually happening. So civil society and the general public often have a larger voice here. The fourth pillar, we can talk about reparations. And so reparations here can include individual collective material or symbolic reparations. Sometimes this takes the form of exemption from military service, guarantees of jobs, pensions. And so there's quite a range of mechanisms here. But I think there will be some more specific ones we can talk about in relation to Hong Kong. But before we get to that I want to talk about an often under-emphasized but equally important fifth pillar of transitional justice. And that's memorialization. So in Hong Kong we've seen memorialization actually as a powerful tool that's been used by civil society in the past but which is being repressed and we can see the effects of it now. I think the most easy example to begin this discussion with is the Tiananmen Memorial that happens on June 4th in Victoria Park each year in Hong Kong. Usually these vigils are candlelit and attended by thousands of people but in recent years of course they've been completely blocked by the police. And I think to see the importance of memorialization here we can really understand its power. Why go to the effort of blocking memorialization if it's not actually a powerful tool? Memorialization is an important piece of society's moving forward while healing from the past. I think another good example coming from South Korea would be the Jeju Sassam Sakon and the memorialization that has been possible now but was not possible in the past. We can really see how fact-finding and truth-seeking in addition to memorialization can help people understand what happened in the past so that they can heal and move forward in the future. So to sum up those more abstract ideas, I'd like to localize this in Hong Kong by talking about the five demands from the protesters and mapping those onto a transitional justice framework and then hopefully advancing from there. So to talk about reform I think we can point to the withdrawal of the extradition bill as a central piece of reforming a goal of reform in Hong Kong. For truth-seeking we can look to the protesters' demands of the Commissioner of Inquiry into police brutality and actually retracting the classification of protesters as rioters as well. For reparations we can talk about amnesty for arrested protesters and also clearing their reputations as well. And then finally also under the reform category I think dual suffrage, universal suffrage meaning for both the Legislative Council and the Chief Executive will be an important piece. So I'd like to close off with some recommendations and maybe some opportunities for future advocacy and activity. Firstly, I think it's important to support those into exile. We've heard this from the speakers today and it seems like a clear need that those who are fleeing Hong Kong need to be supported. This is both physically where possible, they need safe havens and countries to flee to but then also to be supported with public statements from neighboring democracies. When it comes to Korea I believe we can push the government to make Korea a safe haven for those fleeing Hong Kong. A few concrete ways to do this might be to provide more scholarships of those people fleeing from Hong Kong and also offer more opportunities to settle here. Next I'd like to recommend that we support the work of civil society documenters and the space for civil society to act freely. This is a space that needs active democratic protection. As other speakers have referenced, civil society actors all have an interest in protecting this space and so a shrinking of this space or an attack in this space while initially only targeted at one group, sooner or later actually affects other groups and causes. So this space is essential to a well-functioning democracy and so it needs to be actively protected. On the documentation topic, two immediate needs that come to mind may relate to tracking detainees and case progresses. There are of course technology tools that exist to track these and publicize this information online so that governments and other stakeholders can make informed decisions. In preparation for accountability I believe Chain of Command in the police and other security agencies it would be a good idea to map this and again their database is specifically designed that can make this data organized for efficient analysis for use by civil society and then later on accountability processes also. Then finally I'd like to echo some of the thoughts of the other speakers as well and say that Korea has a unique opportunity to advocate for the protection of democracies internationally. Korea's soft power and economic influence can be used to support democracy in the region and what we're seeing in Hong Kong could easily be replicated in other contexts and so I would like to encourage the people here today to use that power. I would like to pose my question to Mr Ted Hui and I know that you are staying in Australia and that you have received very support from the Australian government. I was wondering did you consider coming to South Korea to continue your activities? Was there any difficulties that arose that stopped you from coming here by any chance? Or is there anything that you think that the Korean government should do to provide more support to the activists that are on exile? Exactly something I'd like to address because in my decision to move to Australia I'm determined to be more focused on Asia into Pacific regions and to do lobbying and advocacy work there. So of course South Korea is a very important ally and of course stakeholder in the region but of course why I am hesitant in going to South Korea because of the extradition treaty that South Korea still has an existing one with the Hong Kong regime and of course also with China and this is something quite confusing to me personally and to many Hong Kongers because we understand South Korea to be a free country and with mature and established democracy but in face of police brutality and all the brutal crackdown of human rights and abuses of human rights in Hong Kong and in different parts of China and South Korea didn't follow suit of many free countries in the world of suspending the extradition treaties that is in place with Hong Kong's regimes or with Beijing so I would personally worry about my safety when I travel to Australia as I worry about my safety if I travel to semi free countries like Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore but I personally believe that South Korea shouldn't be on that list of making people like me worried about our safeties but whenever the treaty is in place I worry about being decided back to China and for serving my jail times and decades for perhaps for life so this is exactly what I believe the South Korean government can be doing and it's not as complicated as economic boycotts or sanctions that needs to go through very complicated processes and so to stop the extradition treaty with the Hong Kong regime and with Beijing I believe it's first priority and the South Korean government should consider in supporting Hong Kong's cause Can I add something to that quickly? I was actually, because of COVID, we have not had a real need to travel but I mean I have a need to travel, I have family in the Philippines and I have been advised by, informally been advised by my government that I should be careful where I travel to because there are countries who have not gotten rid of the extradition treaty the chances of me being extradited as an American citizen they consider are fairly low however it gets back to the point that I made before the Chinese Communist Party is much more aggressive abroad than we've ever seen before they're not hiding behind, they're not hiding back in their consulates and their embassies and there's little doubt in my mind that if they thought they could, in the place like the Philippines or some other place if they thought they could pressure somebody to do it, I think they would try to at least get you picked up so I think that's quite an issue to worry about I echo with Ted and Mark that the extradition treaty is a big concern to many of us especially we are in exile, forcing to self exile there are a number of countries that we dare not to visit or even take a transit flight for example, Singapore actually Belgium is also a dangerous place because of the extradition treaty with China so we don't want to see that Korea could become another treaty that could pose a great danger to us if we try to travel to South Korea but I think I or maybe we hope to visit Korea after the COVID or pandemic Before we go on I'd just like to say a few comments on the answers that I heard today Thank you for your answers, actually in Korea we have people from Myanmar who have received a special entry right to Korea because of their participation in the struggle that they had in Myanmar and some of the activists have actually applied for refugee status and they are allowed to stay in Korea but in case of Hong Kong I do think the Korean government is being very active in finding a way to support the activists in Hong Kong and I find that quite shameful and I do give my word that I will try my best to find a way in which we can really resolve this problem You mentioned that it is getting harder and harder to do business there in Hong Kong so I was wondering what is the CCP's terminal goal here because when we look back into Korea's history back in 1987 when we won our democracy and universal suffrage the turning point there was that the Korean military dictators they could not afford losing the economy or lose the society for their own good because we have our understanding here saying that some people here in Korea say that China has changed from its stances in 1997 saying that it no longer needs Hong Kong for their economy say China's economy has grown big and Hong Kong is now only a minor portion of it so they can afford to lose it we perceive it as so that is the reason they are going really harsh on the Hong Kong's democracy and they are actually not afraid of losing Hong Kong so I'm asking this question because we mentioned sanctions here and would any sanctions on Hong Kong itself would bring irreversible damage to the economy and people job there and say other society so we are really afraid what that sanction should be aimed towards and I remember lawmaker Hui mentioned boycotts on the upcoming Winter Olympics there in Beijing and I see it is quite not possible for Korea to participate in that effort but would there be other political methods that we can take to put pressure on the Chinese CCP because to be honest Korean economy is now deeply entangled with China now so it is quite impossible for us to give up on that portion so would there be any other measures that we can take? two questions one for Mark I guess I'll let Ted handle the Olympics thing look one of the things I mean you know I've been involved in the chambers of commerce I've lobbied back in pre-97 I lobbied for MFN for China I actually have a column I know the Hong Kong economy quite well look there's no doubt that if you're the measure they use to measure the importance of the Hong Kong economy is almost it's archaic in other words what they're doing is they're looking at well there's a bigger containment or terminal in Shanghai there's a bigger containment or terminal in Shenzhen that's never been Hong Kong's true worth to China Hong Kong's worth has been three things it's been the rule of law in other words you could do contracts in Hong Kong and China and they meant something in other words you didn't have to run back to New York or things like that it's been an international financial center we're quite frankly the Chinese actually they do not have a convertible currency the renminbi in Taiwan is not convertible they still have to have some place where they have some form of control to change their currency and that is Hong Kong out on the international marketplace they really don't have the same level of control doing the currency transactions as they do and the security they would have in Hong Kong working with Chinese banks and also large Hong Kong banks but the third thing that Hong Kong has always provided traditionally provided it has been a source of FDI and what I would call quality funding in other words across the border from Hong Kong is with no offense to other nations probably the most dynamic tech center in the in all of Asia in other words it's not Silicon Valley but certainly it ranks up there with Israel and some of the other places and it's called Shenzhen and funding for Shenzhen exclusively almost flows through Hong Kong in terms of start-up money these are entrepreneurs think zoom think all these companies that start up the international knowledge based private equity guys they don't come through Shanghai that often they come through Hong Kong so destroying Hong Kong actually has a ripple effect throughout the Chinese economy the other thing that Hong Kong brings is it brings an example of best business practices in other words if the Hong Kong stock market the Hong Kong markets have to be open transparent and everything else then the China markets have to be that it's the reason why we've seen for the last 20 years every Chinese city trying to convince the rest of the world that they have the same laws and administrations and free flow of capital as you do in Hong Kong so in other words yes it's kind of like saying that okay New York City is not as valuable as it is today because we have Silicon Valley I wouldn't argue that Hong Kong is absolutely as important as it was 25 years ago in terms of some things such as trade manufacturing and things like that but I would argue that it's even more important than it is for the sectors that China wants to move into which is tech financing and things like that but most importantly and it's it can't be overstated I'm not one that gives lawyers much credit but the rule of law is everything I mean if you can't have a contract that is viable in China then you're not you're going to have trouble doing business there I mean I think if I used to deal with a lot of Korean shipping companies point of point of arbitration that they would accept was Hong Kong they didn't want to you know and and and that's the that's the issue that really I think that that people you know are not understanding there as far as things like real estate prices Hong Kong is a small town at six million people and people are leaving at a rapid pace and you know what the Chinese have enough money up there and they can flood enough people so that they can keep the property market floating they can keep everything going but we're about to see something come out from the Biden administration tomorrow it's my belief that that doesn't really have to do about how important Hong Kong is to China but it's really a warning to American businesses and it's something Korean should consider as well that you have to have both eyes open now in Hong Kong and before you can count on the rule of law and other things I fully I fully understand the Korean I mean you trade with your neighbors Canada is still the United States biggest trading partner and there's you know I think there remain our biggest one and there's only 26 million of them so I fully I've spoken with Korean politicians multiple times I fully understand that you're not going to win a lot of support saying hey let's start having an economic war with China you know there's a lot of jobs on the line but I do think and I think it is completely prevalent and helps Korean businesses to hold China's feats to the fire when it comes to abiding by the international international norms that were have been previously set in Hong Kong and asking making sure that Korean businesses are protected and I'm sure the first time you bring that up just like they didn't like your cruelty remark I'm sure you'll get a lecture from China about small nations should just obey good nations so you know I mean so I mean I do I do think Hong Kong's moderately more important than the day one of say it is so so so Mark you believe that the Chinese government wouldn't end up daring to totally crack down Hong Kong's economy I quote a guy named Bill McGurn at the Wall Street Journal Hong Kong with that with with with the Chinese handling the Chinese Communist Party handling Hong Kong is a gorilla with the Strativarius I mean a free market is so important and it's so difficult my personal belief is is quite frankly I think the Chinese Communist Party has a different role for and I think your your national security people will probably start seeing it I think they intend to weaponize Hong Kong and what I mean by that is they want to pull Chinese companies back from overseas markets the New York Stock Exchange and they want to have China using Hong Kong as a financial hub for China's interest in other words not an international hub but basically a Chinese hub and they'll basically fund it through all their massive pension funds and everything like that but my belief is you're going to see the Chinese Communist Party to keep Hong Kong busy and not to fall flat on their face I think they'll just be they'll start trying to run Chinese business through Hong Kong and they'll be coming to places like Korea so if Korean companies were going to say List in the US they will desperately try to get Korean companies to come to Hong Kong but that holds that holds if Hong Kong's not a safe market does that really do Korean companies really want to go there and so that's what I see I think I think I think they they know that their failures in Hong Kong are becoming widespread and I think they'll do anything they can to keep those numbers up and they'll make the argument numbers so you will start seeing a lot of Chinese companies List in Hong Kong that you know will only be of interest to Chinese investors because they won't have the transparency that Hong Kong will lose the transparency and the rule of law and so it'll become a place people can invest in from abroad because Mark has provided a comprehensive answer I just want to provide some data for restaurants so back in 2017 around 63% of the foreign direct investment FDI and also direct investment from China has to be risked through Hong Kong so this shows the strategic importance of Hong Kong to China economically so in May 2020 there was a public survey in Hong Kong in which there were around 370 correspondents participated in such survey and then there was a question which is asking whether Hong Kongers would want to pursue some kind of strong economic sanction or if we burn your burn with us strategy with China so with 5 marks as a full mark around the average score was 4.2 marks so this shows the determination of Hong Kongers try to call for strong economic sanction against Hong Kong as the city and against China so these are just some background information for reference. Regarding the questions of Winter Olympics the boycott and just try to imagine the scene that you will see on TV during Winter Olympics that head of state from different countries from 3 countries and president of South Korea will be shaking hands with Xi Jinping or to greet each other to give a speech and working on celebrating together that this is very very discouraging for Hong Kongers fighting for freedom of democracies will be outrageous for people being locked up in jails because the world acts as if nothing's happening and business is as usual that's why we have a call for a boycott of the Winter Olympics but having been politicians for the last decades for more than 10 years I understand the importance of compromises and getting consensus so I'm a pragmatic lobbyist myself that why there are other alternatives as to diplomatic boycotts that means relocation of the Winter Olympics so if there are different options for South Korean governments how about a notion or a public statement about being the openness being open considering a relocation of the Winter Olympics not in Beijing but not a total boycott I understand that it can be unfair also for the athletes that's why there are leeways of other alternatives of doing it and so if that is not even possible that goes back to the previous suggestions proposal that I mentioned suspensions of the extradition treaty and I believe if there are different options on the plate the suspension of the extradition treaty would be the less risky and be a more possible or plausible options for South Korean governments so I hope that you will really consider this option instead of something possible Well thank you very much for participating in this session today I was really curious about what we can specifically do for Hong Kongers there and well I learned today that political boycotts and economic sanctions and maybe some other possible methods of sanctions can be useful to Hong Kong people well it is really hard for us as I mentioned to help the Hong Kongers in a public manner since Chinese Communist Party is really harsh on us on this issue and but as an opposition party here in Korea it is really hard to get updates on this issue and then maybe if we win the presidential election next year we can come up with more practical and stronger solutions to help the people of Hong Kong so let's keep in touch and share more ideas in the future and I will definitely personally support your efforts always Thank you for but it's participation today I am much more impressed at what we have been able to talk and there's so much that we have talked about today so thank you once again I mentioned that I met with the youth activists from Thailand and Myanmar and that they mentioned that they were inspired by not only the democratic pricing in Korea but also in Hong Kong so I think not only Korea but Hong Kong is also becoming a symbol of democracy in Asia and you are the heroes in this effort and and and and and and and and and and and and I know that you are already experiencing it but and realizing it but this will be a long-term struggle it will be a long fight and in Korea we also have similar acts like the national security act we also have that in Korea which opposes any political opposition and tries to suppress it so we also have that and recently we are working on a media act that is going to be amended but many think that it is too much of a suppression on free press so I believe that evil laws bad laws will not be passed and that the freedom of press will remain because we have achieved this before and we have already we have that trust in ourselves and confidence that the freedom of press, the freedom of speech will be protected going forward and so I hope that you will not lose heart in that process in this long march that you have ahead of you that taking step by step it will be slow but there will be achievements made along the way and I hope that you will never give up and that we promise to be by your side in that journey so thank you we are different but I hope that you will continue to be with us in this long march for the people of Hong Kong and thank you for participating in this and I recorded the content that you have participated in and I will find a way to connect with you and once again thank you and I would like to send you a strong connection and I will try my best to make a strong position for the Korean youth to fight for democracy and to stand in solidarity is not awkward it's not new for us and that is why I was very happy to welcome Chairman Lee Jun-suk from the people power party and although we are different political parties we have the same goal and I think that we can really join efforts if we work together so I hope that he will continue to be with us and take part in this effort together and today I have actually written down everything that I can from your words and I promise to really search a way in which we can continue this solidarity I really appreciate all the words that you have said today and I've learned a lot and I hope that we can continue to keep in touch and to have these round tables to really share views to see what is going on and so I send you my strongest support and solidarity so thank you once again. Thank you very much for your time, thank you so much. Let's hear final short say from our guest speakers starting from Ted Wei please. Yes thank you so much everyone and thank you for your strong support I believe it's really important not only on a democratic level but in the civil society level that we are given opportunity so that the Koreans and ordinary citizens understand what's the real situation in Hong Kong and I understand that for South Koreans and either your politicians or citizens with your relationship with China and your values of freedom and democracy it's easy to put yourself put the country in a very difficult situation with tough choices difficult choices in terms of economic interest and trade relationships and on the other hand you have human rights and freedoms to protect but I believe that freedom and democracy as universal values will always prevail and I look forward into more and more exchanges with South Koreans, politicians and people like you and I hope to stay in touch with you so that we can collaborate in future development of democracy and freedom in Hong Kong. Thank you very much for your time today. Thank you very much for your time today. As I would say the only thing that I keep driving home is no free press, no free markets and the one thing I would say I very much understand that South Korea is close to China economically. I understand that they do take great umbrage and they like to huff and puff but I would say that's mostly what that's all they do and I do think it's important every once in a while for people to take their ideas of freedom and democracy out for a walk no matter what the neighbor says. So I do think quite frankly I think I do believe that Korean people they may not be looking for sanctions they may not be looking for some other things but I don't think it's ever a loser in a democratic society whether it's Korea, Lithuania, Mexico or the US to stand up and say we believe in human rights we believe in democracy, we believe in a free press and we wish you would too I think they'll huff and puff but that's all they'll do. Thanks for organizing this and so it is my honor to speak today my last word or last week mark for this event is that I would say Korea plays a vital role in the geopolitics of the Asia Pacific region so with the CCP as the common threat to the existence of the democratic governments in Korea, Japan and Taiwan I do think that Korea has taken a good move to join the G7 summit in the UK in June just a few weeks ago so I think it's also time for the D-10 alliance to be formed as a league of democratic countries while the UN has been paralyzed by China so this is my last remark and some people may say Hong Kongers seems to be fighting a losing battle but I don't think so, I do see hope because of the shift of the pandemic and even though it may be seems like a losing battle we will continue to fight because after all Hong Kong is our home town, home city and home country. I would like to say thank you for the organizers of this event. It's really encouraging to see cross-party cooperation on democracy and human rights issues and hopefully this will expand and that more interest will be gathered here and I think this is a good example of what's possible across party lines so thank you again.


and welcome to the Donahue Group. We're just enjoying ourselves here so much this afternoon, even before the show begins, that we just need to refocus ourselves and introduce ourselves and get ready to talk about interesting issues facing the city and surrounding areas. With me today, Cal Potter, former State Senator and former Assistant Superintendent of Public Instruction for Library Services, Professor of Mathematics at UW-Shabuigan, Ken Risto, in charge of the Social Studies Department for the Shabuigan Area School District, and I'm a lawyer and just sort of a gadfly, a gadabout. And in charge of the program, at least nominally, until something really terrible goes wrong. Socrates was a gadfly. I know that's not quite the expression I want to use, but in any event, there's a fair amount going on in the city, although it does seem to be a little bit of a replay. We continue to talk about the police station. It looks like 2007 is the time for the police station, at least as far as the city council is looking at it. Interesting headlines about the cost of actually running it. I think the Finance Department, Rich Gephardt, put the cost of $272,000, which, lo and behold, means that we need to lay some people off. Is anybody surprised? No, school districts go through this all the time. Build a building, then they have to equip it with desks and all kinds of manner of things and then the janitorial staff and all kinds of other folks to staff it. I remember... We went through that with the school district when we built the last set of additions to the high schools. We got word at around mid-July before schools started that, well, we've got classrooms where we don't have desks or chalkboards and all of a sudden money had to be taken out of all sorts of budgets, so I'm not in the least bit surprised that people have done that. We have built a building and we didn't lay anybody off it. We had a donation from the Brock Foundation and the county was able to finance it, so we appreciate their work. Well, UW-Shabuigan has actually been very, very successful in attracting major community support for the Broad Science Building, for the Acuity IT Technology Center, which is going to be a fabulous building. And the county certainly had to kick in some funds, at least for the Acuity Building and matching, but that seems appropriate under the circumstances. But I just remember moving from our first little house to a somewhat bigger house and thinking, you know what? It takes a lot longer to clean the big house than it does to clean the little house, so I think it is an interesting problem for the city just to deal with all the rising costs and the absolute freeze on tax revenues. Although the proposed budget raises city taxes, I believe by, and I'm just going to look at my 1.5% increase, the total city tax levy is going to go up. Overall, that seems pretty decent, but... It's underneath the inflation rate. What is that 1.5%? That's the city that would be the school budget because that's coming a little bit under budget, in fact. Well, the school. For those of us who live in the Shabuigan area school district, three out of four of us, because of Governor Doyle's clear support for continued funding for public education, we're actually looking at a positive decline in the school taxes. And I must say that when I got on the Shabuigan area school district Board of Education, it was six years of peace and prosperity as we continued to lower tax rates or at least not have them jump up too much. There were some unfortunate side effects. The qualified economic offer was difficult for teachers or so I'm told. And there were other tax restraints in place for the school district way back in 96 that are just coming to roost in city and county governments. Can I clarify? Is it the city budget is going to go up by 4% but the tax levy is going to go up by 1.5%? They throw different numbers out. Right. The 2006 city budget would include a 4% tax levy increase. Right. But the percentage increase, the tax rate will go up 1.5%. And I think that's just because of added construction in the... Expanding property tax base is what really boils down to. And actually the increase is $783,255 over last year. So it's very tight though. Again, we had the mayor here last month just talking about what seems to me to be fairly grim realities in the city's government but really just about any place is really... All over the state, if you've been watching the news from other Milwaukee television whatever you're seeing, fire departments starting to talk about fees per call or accident scenes for paramedics. I live in a rural area of a septic tank. You've got to notice from the county we're going to be assessed so much per year for the first time for having a septic tank and presume that's a fee that's going to go to the accounting planning office who monitors that area of the sanitary code. So I think you're going to see more of that in Wisconsin. It's going to be interesting to see how the people react because this is typical of what other states have done. Other states have had rather draconian controls on spending increases but they've always had a menu that's spread wide on fees and this is something Wisconsin's never really had so it's been on a property tax. It's the basis of local supporting of services. Now if we start getting into fire fees and police fees and septic fees and all kinds of road fees we see a whole different way of paying for government it would be interesting to see how the public reacts to that. Well, the one thing that we can maybe just segue into talking about the county budget which again is coming in with a slight increase but nothing terribly significant but the nursing home issue obviously continues to be very, very tricky for the county. I think the, I may have this wrong but the projected loss in 2006 for the county nursing homes is in the range of about five million dollars. Nobody's talking about, at least none of the supervisors that I hear are talking about a county sales tax and there are, and Cal maybe you know or you guys know what number of counties in the state of Wisconsin have county sales tax usually at point five percent but it's a fair number. It is, it's the majority I believe. And particularly in the eastern part of the state you find where there's been resistance and I think it may be due to the fact that property taxes around here have been fairly high because we just have a high level of service. Yeah, and it'll be interesting just to see and I think there's hardly a politician and they're all politicians instead of legislators these days and we'll talk about that later but that really wants to talk in any way shape or form about creating a new tax. Now the fee issue that I think that you've talked about is more palatable in general. When we've been talking about Tabor and the taxpayer bill of rights and how high income taxes are in Wisconsin and so forth sometimes we fail to take into account that user fees are not as widely used. I mean they're certainly in place but not as bad as other... Sheboygan had a wheel tax. I was on the council and I voted for the wheel tax and that was just to take care of the roads and services and any, it was minimal but it provided a base and of course this new council last, I don't know, two, three years or two, three years ago they got rid of the wheel tax. So that fee that was there they could probably use now. Well actually I think it's actually in place until 2007. Oh it is. I thought they deleted it. But there were some promises at least that that would not be in place anymore. Is that a good idea or should we keep a wheel tax? It's not much, it's ten dollars I think if I'm not mistaken. I don't think any tax is popular. And I think the key is whether it's going to be a trend. I've seen other communities that are now looking at pothole fees and so on in order to keep up their roads and if this becomes the norm I think people are going to say how do you want your poison? Do you want to pay a fee or do you want to put it on your property tax? Which one do you want? And people will make some choices. And one of the things about sales tax is that it's how you pay and sometimes if we're paying every time we go to a store or whatever it seems a little less painful than when you get your tax bill in December just at Christmas time and you realize that it's costing you three or four or five or six hundred dollars a month just in property taxes to occupy your house. Again I think it is a case of how do you want to take your poison. It's in a regressive tax just like the property tax and is your base greater with a sales tax? I think the conclusion of many people it is. Yeah. Because businesses and others who are taking or tourists that come to your community are paying and people who are just passing through in general are paying through their purchases. And some properties are exempt from the property tax or some non-profit agencies, churches and other agents are exempt so but if they were paying a sales tax they'd pay a little bit. Now some states and some communities across the country are starting to think about getting around some of the exemptions on non-profit organizations by charging them what in essence they're calling a users fee that even though one has a church on that property or the Red Cross or whatever, the Girl Scouts, whatever it might be you're still using municipal services and you ought to be paying at least for that so I know some people are trying to go down that road of broadening the tax base by making that distinction and it'll be interesting to see how that survives those amendment challenges. Didn't the stormwater fee apply to all properties? Everyone, yes. And so there were... They called it a user fee and it really was a tax because it applied to everybody. I mean I could not say I don't want to participate in the user fee but I had to so it's a tax. I think you're going to see more and more of that in attempts to widen tax bases and try to get various non-profits to at least pay for police and fire protection along the same kind of logic that you saw there. And they're not using the word tax because tax always raises those kinds of first amendment issues at least with religious organizations. And I think for people who can itemize deductions of course having the property tax is a nice deduction that you can capture so far. The federal panel is saying... The federal commission, the presidential commission who knows what's going to happen with that especially as we come into an election year and I don't think they're going to do anything between now and next November anyway but their proposal that the administration is looking at is eliminating the deduction for state taxes income taxes and local property taxes. And of course this gets back to the fact that... I should say in return for which I think they're going to notch down the income brackets another percentage point, if I remember right. I was looking at it in the Wall Street Journal. So if you live in a low state tax environment and you make fairly decent incomes you're maybe going to come out a little bit ahead and you have to kind of do the math. But if you're clearly a state like Wisconsin it's going to get hammered. And I think that's sort of the agenda here is to try to cut off the spit. Try to at least make state taxes even more probably less palatable than they already are for people. Because I can kind of work on my taxes like you aren't saying well Wisconsin's kind of high here and I don't necessarily like it but... Well you can always rationalize our high property tax because if you're in a 25% tax bracket it means the feds to your detectability of the property tax is picking up 25 or a quarter of your property tax. When you don't have that anymore it's kind of tough to rationalize the higher rates that we do have. That's the interesting thing about the tax burdens when we compare states they always come out and say we're 6th per capita but when you start taking in total tax burden including the detectability we go from 6th to 11th because you can deduct from your federal tax. So that will surely raise our real net tax burden if the detectability is scrapped by the feds. When you see the statistic like there was something else when you were talking Cal that I was thinking about when you see that ranking in Wisconsin as 6th is that including the property taxes there's some sort of a tax that other states pay. It's a state and local it doesn't include usually fees it's the visible sales tax, income tax, property tax. Exactly. And so when you start looking at other fees that other states pay then the rankings maneuver down in Wisconsin almost to the middle of the pack if I remember right. It's pretty close. And that's not only what individuals pay you can get into states like Texas and Louisiana others that have severance taxes that deal with oil, gas and so on and mineral taxation which if you net that in that helps to keep their tax burden down as well. Well I just remember in law school just the basic concept that was conveyed to us and obviously can be conveyed long before you get to law school is that taxation is really social policy. You really talk about how your society is structured and what's important to you and how income gets distributed and all of that based on your tax policy. I always enjoy the discussion about and we're certainly getting a little far afield here from city and county politics but tax simplification and what would we do if there was truly a simple in quotes tax system and probably you can't do it because we have such complex social structures that are governed by who pays what and how it goes and so forth. I mean it would really be a revolutionary thing if you just said just pay 15% The flat taxers are kind of like the flat earthers you know Nobody escapes it. Europe has simplified by going basically to a value added tax which is huge. Which is a national sales tax before the consumer gets the product. I have always been opposed to sales taxes but the more I see what has been happening to our federal tax code I'm not so sure that the value added tax isn't a better way to go. I mean there are like 13,000 lobbyists in Washington all clearing water for some special interest and every tax code revision we've had has always been a boon to somebody who's lobbied most successfully to somebody else. Exactly, exactly. I'm not so sure that maybe a value added tax where private and public and everybody pays and you can try to at least modify your tax burden by your spending habits so I don't really need to buy this and make those type of choices is better than being the victim of somebody else's successful lobby effort and that's really what the tax code has become. And the Presidential Commission did in fact look at a package that did include a consumption tax of one kind or another there weren't too many details about what was exempt and what was included in that because you may want to like we do in Wisconsin with the sales tax you may want to exempt certain kind of basic food stuffs and medicines and those things. Legal services? Yeah, well there you go. They're in line with the rub. You may start opening the door to the exemptions and pretty soon the Gucci Gulch starts working and you've got lobbyists making their case for why their services should be exempted. So there's nothing simple about taxes. There is no way to simplify because we can't simplify I don't think our society quite as much but in any event. Back to more mundane. Just before I came to the radio they were talking about the bus service. And it wasn't to get rid of it but there's got to be a better way because you know when you count the federal dollars and the city dollars it was over three million dollars and you're carting people around the city now you're carting nobody around the city maybe a few people around the city. So they said how can you better provide a service? Now Mayor Perez says the $3 million plus budget. The Mayor says and I have to agree that there are no city services by and large that you can make money on or that breaks even. I know the register of deeds is always very proud that her department does not cost the county anything but every piece of paper you bring into the register of deeds you bring a check along with you because she won't take any paper without a $10 or $12 or a $7 check and that's fine I mean those are user fees for recording your deeds or you're getting a birth certificate or whatever. But what city services do we have that make money for us or break even? The police don't the fire department certainly doesn't I mean it's all about services so it's just a question of who you serve and what is again what is the basic service? I am representing a fellow who was on social security disability cognitively disabled he actually got a job and good for him and he's making not great money but he's supporting himself now and it's a real success story I think and he has a bus pass $48 a month because he works out in the new industrial park and his family has to take him out when he works Saturdays he gets overtime because the bus service doesn't run when he needs to go but what's this fellow going to do who's a working member of society but certainly can never have a driver's license how's he going to get to work? What can you do with $3 million to provide a service to that guy? How many Saturdays are there in a year? You know 52, 50 Saturdays in a year? Well there's that dependency because we get so much federal money for it exactly can't we just hire some vans to run people around I mean it may not be you know my kids take the bus home from school they take the bus here and there or used to not so much anymore I remember growing up here I took route 5 down to the library every Saturday it was just kind of a tradition so I don't know that gets to my view wouldn't it be nice to bring some imagination to government and how we provide services and there's no better place I think to start locally because you can actually affect some changes you can say let's look at the city bus service let's look at the library which breaks my heart that it's taking this hit that does seems to be the favorite whipping boy lately for budget cutters but how can we provide services and with that in mind people who use Meade library who are not residents of the city by and large don't pay for it city people who use the police department also pay for the sheriff's department are there ways that we can be looking at redistributing the equity well I think you have to start looking at regionalization of the service library districts for example would be one thing that Meade could participate in a district that would include those who use the library different tax municipality would be taxed in that Mississippi for library services that's one way it's averse to anybody who wants expansion of government because it's a new type of government but it is a way of doing it the sheriff's department well you could say that some communities because of their size maybe don't warrant having their own police department maybe the sheriff's department ought to be in a county of 110,000 one of maybe only two police departments there are municipalities hundreds of thousands of people that have one police department and they work very well we have what six or seven police departments in this county and I work for a large number of them so we'll just those are the types of questions that maybe we should be asking is how many different jurisdictions should plow how many should have fire departments how many should have police departments and I think that's the key that we need to address how many school districts should we have when you try to close a school or merge a school district everybody wants to have the same mascot they did when they were in high school they don't want to make a change well it's going to take change I think if you're going to try to save money I'm intrigued with the library because our family we've been staunch supporters of the library I'm sure all of us sitting here have been in a very similar facility the new the EasyCat system which allows me to get a book from Cedarburg in a day or from Lakeland College to me it's kind of a dream come true we all talk about well where do we want our tax money spent I like my tax money spent on the public library system but I do think looking at different ways of doing business whether it's taxicab service or expanding eastern shores library system and having equity I'm interested in your reaction this past summer I believe the legislature passed a bill that allows cities to abolish their police departments which previously had not been a city power so if you had a police department you had to keep it I understand that there is a bill that is going to be introduced that allows people in the city to deduct from their property taxes the money that is allocated to the sheriff's department so in other words because we city dwellers pay twice what do you think is there a different way of looking at providing police services can in fact a county sheriff's department serve falls and Plymouth and Kohler the city obviously would be a much bigger sheriff's department than it is now is that a good idea I think both of those measures are going to at least push the issue for discussion where it seems no one really wants to talk about it I was thinking as you were speaking Calibut we almost have boutique government services but we want them at wholesale prices maybe that's what we really need to have is that discussion that government isn't free as much as the national government seems to think so in the last 40-some-odd years but they got to pay for it and if you're not willing to pay for it you got to look at consolidation and give up the right to live in a small little school district where everybody may know their names at the school board meaning and have larger areas and not enough it didn't Scott McAllen when he was governor try something the ultimate goal that these jurisdictions will have to get together and work and maybe eliminate themselves but of course it raised such a big hullabaloo it died and of course it was such a memorable commission I can't remember the professor oh yes I know exactly who you're talking about too two senior moments three wanna make it four he was a UW professor and we talked about reconfiguring the government it wasn't the Kerger commission but a memorable the Kettle commission I knew it began there you go but you are the youngest person here thank goodness I came up with it Don Kettle convened the commission and that was under McAllen wasn't it it was a Tommy Thompson the report came under McAllen and really just talking about ways that we can reconfigure and rethink and boy we don't get very far do we? when you put it out there all the special interests come in and say you can't do it not in my backyard well and people like their local police departments whether I'm in a village or if I'm in a small city I mean we have two small cities relatively small Plymouth and Sheboygan Falls they love their police departments there they love our police department here and the sheriff doesn't have quite that because it's a broader and not based in a particular municipality it's a county wide system but they just got I just wanted to say a new dog and their dog's name is Don the dog Sheboygan Falls dog Sheboygan Falls dog is Larry and then the city has its own dog now it's D-U-C I would say geek but I bet it's it's three dogs Duke so we've got you know we've got three dogs and you know maybe we can share the full dog employment but in any event we got a local anonymous donor who's going to give money for tasers and certainly that's a relatively controversial issue one way or the others but the city council has always said we're okay with tasers as long as we don't have to pay for them and apparently an anonymous donor will come forth and give some money for that so you know those are all I mean we just we're real comfortable with our own little parochial entities and I think it really is very it is the issue is going to have to be forced and the forcing of the issue will be the continuation of the caps plus looking to fees and if there's public outrage over the fees then somebody said what do we do now and then the option is real cuts and real mergers but the issue has to be forced and there are going to be real cuts because if the with the mandatory increases in wages energy and utility rates for goodness gracious sake the this additional $230,000 to operate the new police station if it's constructed in June of 2000 big stuff so well it's been a pleasure as always we've solved the problems of the world