Britain has scolded China for its broadening use of the National Security Law in Hong Kong, detailing attacks on the territory’s vaunted judiciary, civil society groups and foreign diplomats.
“The erosion of liberty in Hong Kong is an affront to freedom and democracy,” British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs Liz Truss said in the publication on Tuesday of her government’s six-monthly report on Hong Kong.
“Just over a year since the introduction of the National Security Law, the mainland Chinese and Hong Kong authorities have used the law and related institutions against all opposition, free press and civil society in Hong Kong,” Truss said in a foreword to the report.
“This curtailing of space for the free expression of alternative views continues to weaken checks and balances on executive power,” she said.
The report covers events up to June 30.
The Chinese and Hong Kong governments issued statements condemning the report, with a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in London saying that British “attempts to create trouble in Hong Kong or use Hong Kong to contain China will not succeed.”
Beijing imposed the law on Hong Kong in June last year after months of protests against the government rocked the territory in 2019.
Citing use of the law against some media and journalists, the report charts pressure by pro-Beijing media that has forced trade unions and other groups to disband.
Outlining criticism from some Chinese officials, it states that “judicial independence is increasingly finely balanced.”
However, Truss said that she believed British judges could still “play a positive role in supporting this judicial independence.”
British judges have long served among the foreign jurists appointed to Hong Kong’s highest court, an arrangement designed to maintain confidence in the territory’s legal system that is seen as the bedrock of its broader social and commercial freedoms.
Britain handed Hong Kong back to Chinese rule in 1997 amid guarantees that its way of life would be protected under a “one country, two systems” model.
Truss said the UK was committed to continuing to monitor the situation in Hong Kong, including speaking to a broad range of politicians.
She said she was concerned at the “growing pattern of the mainland Chinese and Hong Kong authorities misrepresenting such normal diplomatic contact as foreign collusion.”
The Hong Kong government said it “strongly opposed the unfounded allegations,” urging the UK to “stop interfering into the internal affairs of China through Hong Kong affairs.”
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