Mainland security to police Kowloon high-speed rail terminus in Hong Kong, Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen says
Confirmation from Rimsky Yuen raises eyebrows over 'one country, two systems' rule
Mainland officers will be taking up law enforcement duties in Hong Kong when the budget-busting cross-border railway linking Kowloon with Guangzhou opens in 2018, Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung has confirmed, in a move likely to fuel what is already a simmering controversy.
The news, announced in Beijing, met with swift opposition back home. Civic Party leader Alan Leong Kah-kit called it "an affront to the principle of 'one country, two systems'" and demanded an explanation in the Legislative Council.
It has always been the official plan to have both mainland and Hong Kong checkpoints set up at the Kowloon terminus to save time for travellers.
Yesterday was, however, the first time Yuen had made a definitive statement that mainland law-enforcement officers would be based in a jurisdiction over which they had no authority, contradicting earlier suggestions from lawmakers that Hong Kong officers could be deployed.
"In order to deal with co-location, inevitably mainland officers will be allowed to enforce laws in the future West Kowloon terminus," he said after talks attended by Secretary for Transport and Housing Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung and Huang Liuquan, director general of the law department at the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office.