HONG KONG: Hong Kong authorities on Friday (Could 26) condemned a British authorities name for the removing of a China-imposed nationwide safety legislation that Britain stated had been used to persecute, “silence and discredit” pro-democracy opposition figures.
Britain’s Overseas Secretary James Cleverly wrote in his authorities’s newest six-monthly report on Hong Kong that he had highlighted at a UN listening to in February how Hong Kong authorities had used the safety legislation to crack down on opposition figures, lots of whom are in jail or have been pressured into exile.
Cleverly referred to as on Beijing to implement suggestions made in an impartial UN Human Rights Council report final July, together with “eradicating the Nationwide Safety Legislation” that Beijing imposed on the previous British colony in 2020.
Hong Kong authorities stated in an announcement that they “vehemently refuted, strongly disapproved and firmly rejected the slandering remarks and ill-intentioned political assaults”.
A Hong Kong authorities spokesman stated Britain ought to “cease interfering in Hong Kong issues, that are purely China’s inside affairs”.
The spokesman stated Hong Kong’s safety legislation had introduced stability after mass pro-democracy protests in 2019, and that whereas Hong Kong legal guidelines assured sure particular person rights, “such rights and freedoms are usually not absolute” relating to safeguarding nationwide safety.
Britain referred in its report back to the erosion of Hong Kong’s rule of legislation, together with transferring “powers as soon as vested within the judiciary” to Hong Kong’s pro-China chief, and the lack of these dealing with nationwide safety costs to problem authorities selections within the courts.
“We’ve stood with our companions in condemning the regular erosion of civil and political rights and Hong Kong’s autonomy,” Cleverly wrote in a foreword to the report.
