Amnesty International committed to human rights in Hong Kong despite shrinking space for dissent, group’s new head says
- In first interview with regional media since taking up role, Agnes Callamard says electoral changes in Hong Kong aimed at ensuring just one type of candidate exists
- She admits organisation has taken more precautions since passage of national security law and has not ruled out leaving Hong Kong
Amnesty International remains committed to speaking out about human rights in Hong Kong despite “shrinking space for dissent” in the city, the organisation’s new head has said.
“There is no doubt that NGOs will be equally the subject of that law and that the members of NGOs could be targeted in the same way academics have been or businesspeople or students or political leaders and so forth,” she said.
Amnesty will release on Wednesday its annual review of human rights issues covering 149 countries, in which it says the national security law has led to a clampdown on freedom of expression in Hong Kong.
Callamard also revealed the group was taking “far more” precautions in carrying out its work than before and the option of moving its office out of Hong Kong was “still on the table”.
“We have been there for 40 years, so you can well imagine that leaving Hong Kong is a source of anguish, a source of pain in fact,” she said. “It is not a decision that will be taken lightly.”
In the past few months the space for dissent in the city had shrunk “to almost nothing,” but regardless of whether Amnesty remained, the group was committed to raising human rights issues in Hong Kong and the region, she said.
“Everybody is concerned about what they can say in and on Hong Kong. But it does not mean we don’t say it … We cannot be silent and we will not be silenced by the bully boy tactics of China.”