Localist Yau Wai-ching apologises for ‘draft’ letter to Taiwan’s president claiming China stole New Territories

Hong Kong’s constitutional affairs minister yesterday warned Taiwan to stay away from the city’s affairs, after disqualified pro-independence lawmaker Yau Wai-ching apologised for causing a misunderstanding over a letter she drafted to call for Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s support.

“No foreign country, official or authorities from other places should interfere with Hong Kong’s internal affairs,”Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Raymond Tam Chi-yuen said.

Tam was responding a day after Yau said on her Facebook page that she had planned to write to Tsai over Beijing’s recent interpretation of the Basic Law, but the letter published by Taiwanese Chinese-language daily Liberty Times was just a draft that had already been rejected by her party, Youngspiration.

The drama has added fuel to Hong Kong’s oath-taking controversy, with Yau and fellow localist Sixtus Baggio Leung Chung-hang due in court this morning to appeal against the ruling that barred them from the Legislative Council. The High Court ruled last Tuesday that the duo should be disqualified as they “declined” to take their oaths by pledging allegiance to the “Hong Kong nation” and insulting China at their swearing-in ceremony on October 12.

In the draft, Yau questioned Beijing’s sovereignty over the New Territories, arguing that the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration should only have dealt with the sovereignty of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon.

That was because the New Territories became part of colonial Hong Kong after the British and Qing empires signed a 99-year lease in 1898. Since the Qing dynasty was overthrown in 1911, and the lease is now kept in Taiwan, Taipei should explain its stance on the New Territories’ “constitutional status”, Yau urged.

She said the New Territories had been “stolen by China for 19 years” since the 1997 handover.