Beijing’s foreign ministry arm in Hong Kong slams US ‘political show’ after Washington says it will impose visa curbs on officials
- Beijing condemns ‘baseless accusations’ over recent guilty verdicts in Hong Kong’s biggest national security trial to date, rejects ‘political show’ by US
- US Department of State’s says it is ‘taking steps’ to apply new visa restrictions on mainland Chinese and city officials over implementation of national security law
The office issued a strongly worded statement late on Friday night after US Department of State spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington was “taking steps” to apply the visa restrictions. The Hong Kong government also hit back by saying it would not be intimidated by such actions.
Miller said the United States was “deeply concerned by the guilty verdicts from the national security law trial of pro-democracy organisers in Hong Kong”.
His comments, made on social media platform X, referred to Hong Kong’s biggest and longest-running national security trial, in which fourteen opposition figures on Thursday were found guilty of conspiring to subvert state power while two were acquitted over an election plot to paralyse the city government.
The 16 were from a group of 47 politicians and activists prosecuted under the national security law in 2021, six months after they held an unofficial “primary” for the approaching Legislative Council election.
British foreign secretary David Cameron, commenting on the verdict on his X account on Friday, also said “this is the opposite of one country, two systems”, referring to the governing principles underpinned by Hong Kong’s Basic Law mini-constitution.
The Commissioner’s Office of China’s Foreign Ministry in Hong Kong hit back around 11pm, saying the “political show is in vain and the spirit of the rule of law shall not be violated”.