The United Kingdom has announced the suspension of its extradition treaty with Hong Kong, a former colony it handed back to China in 1997.
Speaking to the House of Commons Monday, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab argued that while the government wanted “a positive relationship” with China, the “imposition” of Beijing’s highly controversial national security law made the treaty untenable for the time being.
Last month, China approved a sweeping and contentious national security law that permits authorities to crack down on subversive and secessionist activity in Hong Kong.
The law has been slammed by many in the West as the Chinese Communist Party’s boldest effort to date to crack down on the territory, which has maintained a semi-autonomous system separate from that of mainland China.
Pro-democracy protests took over Hong Kong for nearly a year and left the former British colony in a tense power struggle with the CCP.
This latest piece of legislation was passed amid warnings both in Hong Kong and internationally that it would be used to curb opposition voices in the Asian financial hub.
Speaking to Sky News on Sunday, Raab discussed his plans on the matter.
“On Hong Kong, I’m going to go to the House of Commons tomorrow to make a further statement on the work we’ve been doing with our partners in government,” he told the network.
“I’ve said that we’d review a whole range of other considerations. One of the things that we reviewed is our extradition arrangements, and I will be updating the House on the conclusion of that review, along with other things that we’ve been looking at tomorrow,” he continued.
Despite the UK’s divided government, the Labour party pledged to support the changes in their relations with the Communist country.
The announcement comes the same day that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is due in London for meetings with UK lawmakers.
The US State Department said last week that the nation’s top diplomat will meet with his British counterpart Monday to discuss a range of topics, including the issue of Hong Kong.
Speaking to ITV News on Monday, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson stressed his cabinet’s concerns about China.
“We obviously have concerns about what’s happening in Hong Kong,” he said, adding that Raab would explain “how we are going to change our extradition arrangements to reflect our concerns about what’s happening with the security law.”
In early June, Johnson said that the UK would admit 3 million British National Overseas passport holders from the former British colony, following the passage of the law.
He said at the time that there were about 350,000 holders of the passport in Hong Kong and 2.5 million are eligible to apply for one.
China has faced considerable criticism in recent months over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic and its push to weaken Hong Kong’s autonomy from the Communist nation.
Still, Chinese government officials have remained defiant, with China’s ambassador to Britain, Liu Xiaoming, going as far as to caution the UK against following the lead of the US.
“If the UK government goes that far to impose sanctions on any individual in China, China will certainly make a resolute response to it,” Liu said while speaking to the BBC.
“You have seen what happened between China and the United States. They sanctioned Chinese officials; we sanctioned their senators, their officials. I do not want to see this tit-for-tat between China-US happen in China-UK relations,” she added.
With Post wires