Hong Kong authorities have strongly condemned the “untruthful remarks, slanders and smears” in the UK’s monitoring report on the city, which claimed that national security legislation had diminished the city’s political autonomy.
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British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, in her report, also said it was “hardly surprising” that hundreds of thousands of people had left the city to places where “freedoms are better protected” as she reiterated London’s commitment to the British National (Overseas), or BN(O), visa scheme, which allowed Hong Kong residents to settle in the UK.
In a statement published early on Friday morning, a Hong Kong government spokesman said the UK was not entitled to interfere with the city’s affairs, which were part of China’s internal affairs.
He added that the UK continued to “unscrupulously distort the facts” in criticising the Beijing-imposed national security law and Article 23 of the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, and called Britain’s bullying acts “utterly ugly and despicable”.
The spokesman said the report, which mentioned the case of former media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying and others related to national security offences in the city, could amount to perverting the course of justice.
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“The UK must stop distorting the truth, blatantly discrediting the judicial system and trials of Hong Kong, in an attempt to glorify criminal behaviour and exert pressure on the courts,” he said.
Since July 1997, the UK’s foreign secretary has been required to report to parliament at six-monthly intervals on the implementation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the 1984 treaty that outlined Hong Kong’s post-handover arrangements.