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Opinion | UK government reports on Hong Kong are nothing but a self-deluding charade and must stop
- The British government sees fit to criticise the national security law even as it introduces a harsh new police bill at home
- As for the Sino-British Joint Declaration, London itself has gone back on its agreement with Beijing that it would not grant BN(O) status to future generations
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Why you can trust SCMP
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The British government’s latest sixth-monthly report on Hong Kong, released at the end of last month, is a twisted and one-sided narrative of events in our city during the second half of 2021. It is an attack on our legitimate law enforcement activities, and our reform of our political, educational, legal aid systems and media policies in the name of upholding rights and freedoms.
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The actions taken by Beijing and the Hong Kong authorities were chronicled without the slightest reference to the threats to national security against which the new measures were introduced.
Take the complaint about 155 people arrested under the national security law with 99 charged, four trials completed and all six defendants found guilty. Considering the gravity of the offences involved, inciting secession, subversion or collusion with a foreign country to hurt China, the trials under common law could not be said to be inordinately long or the sentences disproportionately harsh.
Note that during the Black Lives Matter civil rights protests across Britain in the summer of 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared that “those who attack public property or the police – who injure the police officers who are trying to keep us all safe – those people will face the full force of the law”.
Note also that the Johnson government introduced the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill into parliament in March 2021, a controversial bill criticised by human rights groups and women’s organisations for targeting “minoritised and marginalised women” and containing “authoritarian measures that threaten civil liberties including the right to protest”.
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Yet, backed by a Conservative majority with 360 seats in parliament, this bill is set to pass.
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