HONG KONG: Hong Kong authorities on Friday (May 26) condemned a British government call for the removal of a China-imposed national security law that Britain said had been used to persecute, “silence and discredit” pro-democracy opposition figures.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary James Cleverly wrote in his government’s latest six-monthly report on Hong Kong that he had highlighted at a UN hearing in February how Hong Kong authorities had used the security law to crack down on opposition figures, many of whom are in jail or have been forced into exile.
Cleverly called on Beijing to implement recommendations made in an independent UN Human Rights Council report last July, including “removing the National Security Law” that Beijing imposed on the former British colony in 2020.
Hong Kong authorities said in a statement that they “vehemently refuted, strongly disapproved and firmly rejected the slandering remarks and ill-intentioned political attacks”.
A Hong Kong government spokesman said Britain should “stop interfering in Hong Kong matters, which are purely China’s internal affairs”.
The spokesman said Hong Kong’s security law had brought stability after mass pro-democracy protests in 2019, and that while Hong Kong laws guaranteed certain individual rights, “such rights and freedoms are not absolute” when it comes to safeguarding national security.
Britain referred in its report to the erosion of Hong Kong’s rule of law, including transferring “powers once vested in the judiciary” to Hong Kong’s pro-China leader, and the inability of those facing national security charges to challenge government decisions in the courts.
“We have stood with our partners in condemning the steady erosion of civil and political rights and Hong Kong’s autonomy,” Cleverly wrote in a foreword to the report.
