UK suspends Hong Kong extradition treaty, stoking China tensions

- Britain announced yesterday it would suspend its extradition treaty with Hong Kong in an escalation of a dispute with China over its introduction of a national security law for the former British colony.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told parliament the treaty would be suspended immediately and an arms embargo would be extended to Hong Kong.

“We will not consider reactivating those arrangements, unless and until there are clear and robust safeguards, which are able to prevent extradition from the UK being misused under the new national security legislation,” Raab said.

The ban is another nail in the coffin of what then Prime Minister David Cameron in 2015 cast as a “golden era” of ties with China, the world’s second-largest economy.

London has been dismayed by a crackdown in Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997, and the perception that China did not tell the whole truth over the coronavirus outbreak.

“Extraditions between Hong Kong and the UK are extremely rare, so this is a symbolic gesture, but a very important one,” said Nick Vamos, Partner at London law firm Peters & Peters.

Raab said he would extend a longstanding arms embargo on China to include Hong kong, meaning no exports of weapons or ammunition and a ban on any equipment which might be used for internal repression, like shackles and smoke grenades.

Australia and Canada suspended extradition treaties with Hong Kong earlier this month. U.S. President Donald Trump has ended preferential economic treatment for Hong Kong.

Last week Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered equipment from China’s Huawei Technologies to be purged completely from Britain’s 5G network by the end of 2027.