Hong Kong leaders apply national security law retroactively, US congressional panel hears
- US-China Economic and Security Review Commission is told that a pledge not to apply the law to alleged offences committed before its enactment is often violated
- Disqualification of Hong Kong legislators and the closure of Apple Daily are cited as examples
The Hong Kong government has violated a pledge not to apply the city’s national security law to alleged crimes committed before its enactment last summer, pro-democracy advocates and legal experts told a US congressional panel on Wednesday.
As China’s central government imposed the sweeping security legislation on Hong Kong last year, the city’s leader, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, vowed to the United Nations that the legislation would have “no retrospective effect”.
But witnesses appearing before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) said events since have shown no such restraint by authorities.
“There’s been a number of incidents or examples of how time has been warped in Hong Kong,” said Samuel Chu, a US-based pro-democracy campaigner and former founding head of the Hong Kong Democracy Council.
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One such example, said Chu, was the disqualification of a number of legislators “based mainly on speech and beliefs and things that they have actually said prior to the enactment of the national security law”.