Hongkongers make BN(O) passports an election issue for British foreign secretary Dominic Raab
- A report that Raab has blocked plans to grant full citizenship to holders of British National (Overseas) passports has galvanised Hong Kong activists in Britain
- Group is urging voters in Raab’s constituency to support his Liberal Democrat rival
A group of Hongkongers living or studying in Britain is targeting Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab’s re-election campaign after it emerged that he blocked a government plan to give full citizenship to Hong Kong residents with BN(O) passports.
They are calling on British voters in Raab’s constituency of Esher and Walton to support his rival Monica Harding, following a Sunday Times report that he was blocking a Home Office initiative to “allow victims of state repression and violence in Hong Kong to flee to the UK” because he feared antagonising Beijing.
The Hongkongers accused the foreign secretary of “siding with an authoritarian state rather than freedom fighters” and insisted their action would not constitute interference in foreign politics, “because BN(O) holders residing in the UK are legally eligible to vote, and Raab’s decision bears a direct impact on our fate”, according to one of the group who spoke on condition of anonymity.
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Luke de Pulford, a member of the Conservative Party’s human rights committee and a vocal advocate for Hong Kong protesters, said he was in regular contact with “hundreds of UK-based activists … They feel betrayed by the UK, and they are profoundly upset by reports that Raab has blocked a ‘lifeboat’ policy for BN(O) passport holders [and] many have decided to campaign for Raab’s constituency rival”.
He called on Raab to change his stance on BN(O) passports lest he lose his seat in an election that Prime Minister Boris Johnson hopes will secure a majority to get his Brexit deal passed.
“As a lifelong Conservative, I hope the foreign secretary has a rapid rethink – not simply because he may lose his seat if he does not, but because helping BN(O)s is a matter of justice,” he said.
Calls for action were also posted on LIHKG, the online platform popular among Hongkongers sympathetic to the protesters. Some, though, voiced concern over the strategy, saying: “Should we burn bridges with Tories when they are forecast to win a majority?”
Hong Kong Watch, a London-based advocacy group on the former colony’s human rights situation, said: “BN(O) passports are a historic injustice. [Raab] should not block the change at a time when these British Nationals need a safety net.”
Up to 248,000 Hongkongers hold a BN(O) passport, a travel document that does not confer an automatic right to live or work in Britain. It was issued to those born before the 1997 handover of the former British colony to China.
Hong Kong activists based in Britain are some of the most active among their global peers, organising marches around London which have sometimes been interrupted by nationalist-minded migrants from mainland China.
Raab in September told the British Parliament that any changes to the status of BN(O) passport holders risked upsetting the Sino-British Joint Declaration. But, according to The Sunday Times, Home Secretary Priti Patel’s team proposed a “quick fix” to help those seeking to escape Hong Kong.
The British newspaper said Raab objected to Patel’s proposal on the grounds it could anger Beijing and disrupt the “one country, two systems” governing Hong Kong. The Foreign Office described the newspaper report as a “wrong story”, adding that Raab was coordinating what it called “cross-Whitehall contingency planning in relation to Hong Kong”.
China has repeatedly criticised suggestions of any official changes to BN(O) status, as foreign interference in the domestic issue of Hong Kong. It has also called the Sino-British Joint Declaration between British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1984 an “historical document that is no longer valid”.
