My Take | Sorry Britain, Hong Kong’s national security law doesn’t breach the Joint Declaration
- Sunak and Cameron can keep repeating the same lie about our city but the UK domestic security law introduced last year is even more restrictive and has been denounced by UN rights chief
Western critics and political leaders such as British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are fond of repeating the claim that the city’s national security law (NSL) breaches the Sino-British Joint Declaration. Many probably never read the document.
Sunak, Foreign Minister David Cameron and others such as Chris Patten, our last British governor of Hong Kong, have been following Joseph Goebbels’ advice, “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”
Their latest salvo comes with their demand that former Next Media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, now on trial for national security offences, be immediately released.
Now unlike our Western friends who have been so happy interfering with the Hong Kong judiciary while claiming it should be free from interference (from whom?), I won’t be commenting on Lai’s case. But the UK’s claim that our security law breaches the treaty for the handover of Hong Kong in 1997 cannot go unanswered.
Luckily, someone far more expert than myself has already done it. I can do no better than turn to Grenville Cross, SC, law professor at the University of Hong Kong and former director of public prosecutions
In an open letter, Cross not only lays out the legal basis of Lai’s prosecution, but also touches on the Joint Declaration extensively. It’s this latter part that I will be focusing on.