The Chinese foreign ministry office in Hong Kong has expressed its “firm opposition” to a US report that found “significant human rights issues” in the city last year.
The US State Department’s 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, published on Tuesday, contained “fabricated false claims” about the human rights and rule-of-law situation in Hong Kong, the Commissioner’s Office of China’s Foreign Ministry in Hong Kong said in a statement on Wednesday evening.
The US report highlighted the passage of the homegrown Safeguarding National Security Ordinance – better known as Article 23 – in March 2024. The US Department of State said it had broadened the scope and definition of sedition offences and granted Hong Kong authorities “much wider scope to detain and arrest individuals for political purposes.”
The report also cited “arbitrary arrest and detention” and “transnational repression against individuals outside of Hong Kong.” It found “serious restrictions” on free speech, pointing to the first round of Article 23 arrests, which involved jailed Tiananmen crackdown activist Chow Hang-tung and those who managed her social media pages.
It added that the operating space for independent media “shrank further” last year, citing visa denials faced by foreign journalists in recent years, as well as the first sedition case ruling involving the media, when a Hong Kong court convicted and jailed former editors of the defunct Stand News in August.
In response, the Chinese foreign ministry office in Hong Kong said the crackdown on activities endangering national security was a “legitimate measure” and trials in the city were “impartial.”
The US was “rehashing” cases involving “anti-China, destabilising forces in Hong Kong” and openly supporting them, the spokesperson said. They urged the US to stop interfering in Hong Kong’s affairs and to respect China’s sovereignty and the city’s rule of law.
“This fully exposes the US’s politicisation and instrumentalisation of human rights issues, as well as its sinister attempt to use Hong Kong to contain China’s development — an act that is despicable,” the Commissioner’s Office statement read.
Separate from the 2020 Beijing-enacted security law, the homegrown Safeguarding National Security Ordinance targets treason, insurrection, sabotage, external interference, sedition, theft of state secrets and espionage. It allows for pre-charge detention of up to 16 days, and suspects’ access to lawyers may be restricted, with penalties involving up to life in prison. Article 23 was shelved in 2003 amid mass protests, remaining taboo for years. But, on March 23, 2024, it was enacted having been fast-tracked and unanimously approved at the city’s opposition-free legislature.
The law has been criticised by rights NGOs, Western states and the UN as vague, broad and “regressive.” Authorities, however, cited perceived foreign interference and a constitutional duty to “close loopholes” after the 2019 protests and unrest.
