US threatens more China sanctions over Hong Kong MPs’ ousting

The US has warned of further sanctions against China, which it said ‘flagrantly ­violated’ Hong Kong’s autonomy after the ousting of four pro-democracy MPs.

Pro-democracy MPs join hands in a display of unity at Hong Kong’s Legislative Council Building. Picture: Getty Images

The US has warned of further sanctions against China, which it said “flagrantly ­violated” Hong Kong’s autonomy after the ousting of four pro-democracy MPs this week.

“Beijing’s recent actions disqualifying pro-democracy legislators from Hong Kong’s Legislative Council leave no doubt that the Chinese Communist Party has flagrantly violated its international commitments,” US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said on Thursday AEDT.

He added that the US would continue “to identify and sanction those responsible for extinguishing Hong Kong’s freedom”.

The US imposed sanctions on Monday on four more officials ­accused of curbing freedoms in Hong Kong while vowing ­accountability over China’s clampdown in the city.

Edwina Lau, head of the ­national security division of the Hong Kong Police Force, was among the officials who will be barred from travelling to the US and whose US-based assets, if any, will be frozen.

Thursday’s statement from the US National Security Adviser in Donald Trump’s outgoing administration came in response to the ousting of four of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy MPs by the city’s pro-Beijing authorities.

Hong Kong’s 15 other pro-democracy MPs reacted by saying they would all quit in protest, ­reducing the semi-autonomous city’s once-feisty legislature to a gathering of Chinese loyalists.

“We … will stand with our colleagues,” Wu Chi-wai, convener of the 15 remaining pro-democracy legislators, told a press conference. We will resign en masse.”

China responded to the mass resignations by saying they represented a “blatant challenge” to its authority over Hong Kong.

“It once again showed their stubborn confrontation against the central government and a blatant challenge to the power of the central government. We severely condemn this,” Beijing’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office said in a statement said.

“We have to tell these opposition lawmakers that if they want to use this to advocate a radical fight, and beg for foreign forces to interfere, and once again drag Hong Kong into chaos, that’s a wrong calculation.”

Hong Kong authorities had on Wednesday ousted the four members just minutes after one of China’s top lawmaking committees ruled the city’s government could remove any legislator deemed a threat to national security. The resignations come with the city’s beleaguered pro-democracy movement and avenues of dissent already under sustained attack since Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law earlier this year.

“Hongkongers — prepare for a long, long time where there is only one voice in society,” pro-democracy MP Lam Cheuk-ting said outside the chamber as he hung a poster attacking the city’s pro-Beijing leader, Carrie Lam.

“If you are a dissident, get ready for even more pressure.”

Hong Kong’s leader is chosen by pro-Beijing committees, but half of its legislature’s 70 seats are directly elected, offering the city’s 7.5 million residents a rare chance to have their voices heard at the ballot box. The resignations will leave just two legislators outside the pro-Beijing camp.

Critics say the national security law’s broadly worded provisions are a hammer blow to the flickering freedoms that China promised Hong Kong could keep after the end of British colonial rule in 1997.

Germany earlier voiced “deep concern” over the ousting of the four MPs, saying the move “undermined pluralism and freedom of expression”.

“Hong Kong citizens are entitled to free and fair elections and to the freedoms and rights guaranteed by the Basic Law,” a foreign ministry spokesman said.

AFP