Chinese envoy Cong Peiwu warns Canada against granting asylum to Hong Kong protesters
- Responding to media report that couple from city had been given refugee status, ambassador says such ‘interference’ would encourage ‘violent criminals’
- Cong also fires back at PM Trudeau’s charge of ‘coercive diplomacy’ amid dispute over detained Canadians and arrest of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou
China’s ambassador has blasted Canada for reportedly granting refugee status to Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters, calling it “interference” that would encourage “violent criminals” in Hong Kong.
Cong Peiwu also denied that China had taken Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor hostage, and repeated a call for the release of a Huawei Technologies executive held in Canada who faces extradition to the United States amid a long-running diplomatic dispute.
Cong, conducting a video news conference streamed on Twitter on Thursday, said China strongly urged Canada not to grant Hong Kong protesters asylum.
“It is interference in China’s domestic affairs and certainly will embolden those violent criminals,” he said. If Canada wanted to keep the 300,000 Canadian passport holders in Hong Kong safe, it should want to protect them from such “violent criminals”, he added.
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National Security Law: The impact on Hong Kong’s activists
Cong was responding to a question about a report in Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail last week that a Hong Kong couple who took part in pro-democracy protests had been granted asylum in Canada.