UK asks Hong Kong to explain journalist ban

>> HONG KONG: A decision by the Hong Kong government to effectively blacklist a senior Financial Times journalist required an “urgent explanation”, the UK said yesterday, as foreign governments sounded the alarm over eroding freedoms in the former British colony.

Victor Mallet, the FT’s Asia news editor and a British national, earned the ire of authorities for hosting a speech by Andy Chan, the leader of a tiny pro-independence political party.

Mr Chan attacked China as an empire trying to “annex” and “destroy” Hong Kong in a strident speech at the city’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC), where Mr Mallet serves as vice-president.

China’s foreign ministry had asked the club to pull the talk, but the FCC refused, arguing that all sides of a debate should be heard.

Rival protesters picketed the lunchtime event and the city’s former leader Leung Chun-ying called for the club to be evicted from its government-owned premises.

The FT said on Friday that immigration authorities in Hong Kong had declined to renew Mr Mallet’s visa, a decision rights groups and media organisations said was unprecedented.

“We have asked the Hong Kong government for an urgent explanation,” the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office said in a statement.

“Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy and its press freedoms are central to its way of life, and must be fully respected.”

Semi-autonomous Hong Kong enjoys rights unseen on the mainland, including freedom of expression, which are protected in the city’s Basic Law and the handover agreement between China and Britain.

But the space for dissent is shrinking as Beijing flexes its muscles.

Hong Kong authorities last week banned Chan’s Hong Kong National Party, calling it a threat to national security.

It was the first ban on a political party since the territory reverted to Chinese control in 1997.

The US consulate said in a statement that Mr Mallet’s visa denial was “especially disturbing”.