Hong Kong ‘falls to the secret police’
Shock as China rushes into law crackdown on dissent... and a £100k bounty is put on heads of democracy campaigners
HONG KONG became a secret police state last night, critics said, as China passed a law to crush dissent.
Hours after national security legislation was voted on in Beijing, it became law in Hong Kong, bypassing the city’s council.
Just six weeks after the law was first proposed, it was enacted on the eve of today’s 23rd anniversary of the handover that saw Britain give Hong Kong back to China on the promise of 50 years of autonomy and the establishment of ‘one country, two systems’.
It was thought the law would be enforced in September but China moved early to criminalise prodemocracy marches planned for today. The law makes secession, subversion, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces punishable by up to life in prison.
China will set up a national security agency in the city whose officials are not bound by local law when carrying out duties, and suspects can be passed to the mainland. The authorities can monitor and wire-tap anyone suspected of endangering national security.
In a threat to free speech, the ‘management’ of foreign non-governmental organisations and news agencies in the city will be also be ‘strengthened’. All sentences carry be a minimum of ten years in prison. Pro-democracy campaigners rushed to disband their organisations and delete their social media. Some went into hiding after a £100,000 bounty was offered for the first prosecutions. The move sparked a diplomatic firestorm with the UK, EU and US criticising the measures.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: ‘China has chosen to break their promises to the people of Hong Kong and go against their obligations to the international community. (The) United Kingdom will not turn our backs on the commitments we have made to the people of Hong Kong.’
Boris Johnson had vowed to give as many as three million Hong
Kong residents British citizenship if China brought in the measures.
Former city leader Leung Chunying took to Facebook to offer up to HK$1million (£100,000) for anyone who could help secure the first prosecutions or track down people who have recently fled the city. Jimmy Lai, 72, who owns anti-Beijing media group Next Digital, said: ‘If the law is retroactive, I will be in hell. Not just jail. This is definitely the death of Hong Kong.’
Activist Joshua Wong said: ‘The city will turn into a secret police state.’ Beijing said the legislation was necessary after anti-government protests which started in June last year plunged the city into its biggest crisis in decades.
China has been accused of an ‘utter disregard for the sanctity of life’ over claims it is enforcing sterilisation on imprisoned minorities.
Beijing’s draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighur Muslims, who have been rounded up in ‘re-education’ camps in the country’s west with other minorities, are part of a campaign to curb its Muslim population in Xinjiang, a report found.
‘It’s slow, painful, creeping genocide,’ Dr Joanne Smith Finley of Newcastle University said.