Beijing, Hong Kong condemn ‘slanders and smears’ in UK’s latest 6-month report on city

Beijing and Hong Kong have slammed British “slanders and smears” and interference in local affairs after a UK report claimed the city’s national security infrastructure had violated human rights and freedom.

The UK’s latest six-month monitoring report on Hong Kong highlighted the city’s high-profile national security trials and authorities’ move to place a new round of HK$1 million (US$129,000) bounties on six wanted activists accused of violating the sweeping legislation. Four of the six are currently living in the UK.

The report, issued on Thursday and covering the period between July 1 and December 31 last year, also accused China of failing to comply with the Sino-British Joint Declaration signed in 1984, the agreement that paved the way for Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty.

In response, Beijing’s foreign ministry arm in Hong Kong argued that Britain had already completed its role under the Joint Declaration after the city’s handover in 1997, calling the report “essentially a residual poison of colonialism and a product of ideological bias”.

“The so-called six-monthly report, which meddles in Hong Kong’s affairs and smears Hong Kong’s human rights and rule of law … disregards facts, reverses right and wrong, and is a blatant violation of international law and the basic principles of international relations, including ‘non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs,” said a spokesman for the commissioner’s office of China’s Foreign Ministry in the city.

It urged London to do more to benefit the development of China-UK relations instead.