Hong Kong’s human rights situation is “just as bad as China,” a rights advocate has said during an event hosted by the United States Department of State on Thursday.

Patrick Poon, an independent human rights researcher based in Hong Kong, claimed that police had been abusing their power ever since the passage of a national security law in the city on June 30.

He added that there were many instances in which police chose to arrest people under the sweeping law — targeted at banning secession, subversion, collusion with foreign forces and terrorist acts — at odd hours in the morning.

Eight pro-democracy figures, including three former lawmakers, were arrested on Tuesday morning for inciting, organizing and participating in an unauthorized assembly related to protests on June 30 and July 1 this year. They were released on bail and will appear in court next week.

The human rights situation was comparable to China, where human rights lawyers and their families had been put under house arrest, Poon said.

He pointed out that Hong Kong’s judiciary and legislature had also been affected. The city’s judiciary was “no longer independent” as the chief executive had directly appointed certain judges to hear national security cases, he said.

The rights advocate further said that the Legislative Council had been left in the control of pro-government lawmakers after the disqualification of four pro-democracy lawmakers. The expulsion of Alvin Yeung, Dennis Kwok, Kwok Ka-ki and Kenneth Leung came after the National People’s Congress Standing Committee in Beijing passed a resolution last month to crack down on perceived threats to national security. It led to mass resignations from the remaining 15 pro-democracy lawmakers in the 70-seat legislature.

Poon made the remarks during a Facebook live-streaming session hosted by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor to mark International Human Rights Day on Dec. 10.

The discussion was led by the bureau’s assistant secretary Robert Destro and included panelist speakers Fatia Maulidiyanti, coordinator for the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence in Indonesia, and Sopheap Chak, director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.

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