Rights groups, academics shunning contact with EU officials in Hong Kong over national security fears, bloc’s envoy says

European diplomats are finding that groups devoted to causes outside politics are now reluctant to meet them, bloc’s office chief Thomas Gnocchi says

Speaking ahead of global rights day, the envoy tells the Post that if civil society disappears, Hong Kong will lose a pillar of accountability

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Thomas Gnocchi, the European Union’s envoy to the city, has said groups have been reluctant to meet officials from the bloc since the passage of the national security law. Photo: May Tse

Published: 8:00am, 10 Dec 2021Updated: 8:15am, 10 Dec 2021

Civil rights groups and academics have become reluctant to meet European Union officials in Hong Kong following the introduction of the national security law last year, the bloc’s top diplomat in the city has told the Post ahead of Human Rights Day.

Thomas Gnocchi, who leads the European Union Office to Hong Kong and Macau, on Thursday said the impact of the law had rippled beyond political groups to other bodies less likely to cross the red line of authorities, including groups advocating rights for women and labour.

“We’ve seen, really, our ability to reach out diminished. We’ve had much less contact than we had in the past,” he said.

An Italian national who became head of the office last year, Gnocchi stressed the importance of keeping civil rights groups afloat.

“If civil society disappears, you lose one pillar of accountability. I think this is why we are so vocal about the role of civil society. I can only stress how important it is to maintain this space alive,” he said.

The diplomat was speaking the day before the worldwide commemoration of the United Nations General Assembly’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 – known better as the international Human Rights Day.

Since Beijing imposed the security law on Hong Kong in June last year to target secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces the EU, with its 27 member states, has issued a number of statements claiming the legislation was stifling dissent.

Beijing and the Hong Kong authorities have repeatedly insisted the law only targets a small number of people, but Gnocchi stressed the concept of human rights was “indivisible and interdependent”.