National security law: Britain set to confirm BN(O) passport offer to 3 million Hongkongers

Name: UK to raise concerns about Hong Kong national security law before UN Human Rights Council
Uploaded: 2020-07-01T04:25:19.000Z
Duration: 1 min 14 s
Description: UK to raise concerns about Hong Kong national security law before UN Human Rights Council

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to make statement about Hong Kong’s new national security law, as EU and G7 also consider action

Raab could specify extended rights for people eligible for BN(O) passports, offered to Hong Kong citizens born before 1997

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British National (Overseas) passport holders could be offered the right to settle in Britain for extendable periods of 12 months. Photo: Fung Chang

Stuart Lau

Published: 12:25pm, 1 Jul 2020Updated: 12:35pm, 2 Feb 2021

Britain is expected to announce plans on Wednesday to allow nearly 3 million Hongkongers eligible for the British National (Overseas) passport to resettle there, after China imposed a sweeping national security law on the city.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is set to make an appearance at the House of Commons at 12.30pm British time (7.30pm Hong Kong time) “with an update on the Hong Kong national security legislation, and the UK’s response”, according to the parliamentary schedule.

Raab has also been urged by some members of parliament to impose sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials involved in what they call infringement of human rights in the former British colony.

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UK to raise concerns about Hong Kong national security law before UN Human Rights Council

Calls for action were also on the rise in Brussels and at the United Nations. Reinhard Buetikofer, chair of the China delegation in the European Parliament, said that “the Hong Kong we knew is dead now”.

“The European Union and its member states in particular must pick up the proposals made by the European Parliament in dealing with Beijing’s transgressions,” Buetikofer said. “Beijing should be taken to the International Court of Justice.”

Britain and the European Union are understood to be working through the Group of 7 (G7) nations – which also includes the United States – to consider a coordinated response to China’s most drastic change to Hong Kong’s constitutional framework since the city’s handover from British to Chinese rule, which marked its 23rd anniversary on Wednesday.

British National (Overseas) – or BN(O) – passports were offered to Hong Kong citizens born before the 1997 handover.

Under earlier versions of the British government’s plan to extend the rights of those passport holders, every one of the 3 million Hongkongers who qualified for the passport, and their dependents, could relocate to the United Kingdom to stay and work or study for extendable periods of 12 months, creating a “path to citizenship”.