Australia has for the past year been denied access to a citizen arrested in Hong Kong, diplomats said yesterday, the latest case to be prosecuted under the territory’s far-reaching National Security Law.
Canberra officials said they were notified of the person’s arrest in January last year, but “have been denied consular access despite multiple attempts.” They did not name the person.
“The individual is deemed to be a Chinese citizen under China’s citizenship laws, which do not recognize dual nationality,” a spokesperson for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said.
Hong Kong, once regarded as a bastion of free speech within authoritarian China, has been transformed by a 2020 law that Beijing imposed to neuter dissent in the wake of huge democracy protests. More than 160 people have been arrested under the law, including activists and journalists from pro-democracy news outlets.
Often denied bail, many suspects have been detained for long periods before trial.
They include several dual nationals, most notably mogul Jimmy Lai (黎智英), a British-Chinese dual citizen and owner of the now-shuttered pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper.
Lai has been charged over his alleged role in Tiananmen vigils, annual events commemorating the bloody crackdown on Chinese students calling for reform in Beijing.
Like Australia, Britain, Canada and the US have in the past expressed concerns about being denied access to their imprisoned citizens who hold dual nationality.
A key aspect of the security law is that instead of the usual trial by jury, national security cases are decided by hand-picked judges.
The Australian foreign affairs department said officials had been able to attend court hearings and were “in regular contact with the individual’s lawyers.”
“Australia and many other countries have expressed concern about the erosion of basic freedoms and autonomy in Hong Kong, and have called on Hong Kong and Chinese authorities to abide by their human rights obligations,” the department said.
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS