LONDON – Britain mentioned on Thursday the arrest of Cardinal Joseph Zen and three others in Hong Kong beneath nationwide safety legal guidelines was unacceptable.
Hong Kong police mentioned Cardinal Joseph Zen, a 90-year-old former bishop of Hong Kong, and three others had been all had been launched on bail with their passports confiscated beneath its nationwide safety regulation.
“The Hong Kong authorities choice to focus on main professional democracy figures, together with Cardinal Zen, Margaret Ng, Hui Po-keung and Denise Ho beneath the Nationwide Safety Regulation is unacceptable,” British minister James Cleverly mentioned in a press release to parliament.
Zen has lengthy been an advocate of democratic causes in Hong Kong and mainland China, and has spoken out in opposition to China’s rising authoritarianism beneath President Xi Jinping.
The autonomy of Hong Kong, a former British colony, was assured beneath the “one nation, two programs” settlement enshrined in a 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration.
Britain has accused China of breaching that settlement with a safety regulation that punishes offences like subversion with as much as life imprisonment has been used to curb dissent and freedoms.
“We proceed to clarify to mainland China and to Hong Kong authorities our robust opposition to the Nationwide Safety Regulation, which is getting used to curtail freedom, punish dissent, and shrink the area for opposition free press and civil society,” Cleverly mentioned.
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