Four years after China imposed a strict national security law on Hong Kong, the territory’s leader says the time has come for the city to pass its own version.
Chief Executive John Lee told reporters Tuesday the legislature will begin a consultative period to create a set of laws as required by Article 23 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the mini-constitution that has been in effect since Britain handed the city back to China in 1997.
Lee said the new laws will cover treason, insurrection, espionage, theft of state secrets, foreign influence and interference, and sabotage, including the use of computers and electronic systems to conduct acts that endanger national security.
Beijing imposed its own national security law on Hong Kong in 2020 in response to massive pro-democracy demonstrations a year earlier that left the city in turmoil. The law punished anyone in Hong Kong believed to be carrying out terrorism, separatism, subversion of state power or collusion with foreign forces.
Since the law took effect, hundreds of pro-democracy advocates have been arrested, tried and jailed, and the city’s once-vibrant civil society has been stifled.
Lee said while Hong Kong’s society “looks calm and very safe” the threat to its security remains. “We still have to watch out for potential sabotage and undercurrents that try to create trouble,” he said, especially advocates for Hong Kong’s independence and foreign agents he said may still be active in the city.
The consultation period will end on February 28. An attempt to pass a national security law in 2003 was abandoned after a massive street protest that drew 500,000 citizens.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse.
