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US House speaker Pelosi slams denial of bail to Hong Kong democrats

蘋果日報 2021/03/05 12:45


The speaker of the United States House of Representatives on Thursday condemned the rejection of bail for pro-democracy figures facing subversion charges under Hong Kong’s national security laws, and vowed that the U.S. Congress would continue to speak out.
“As Speaker, I condemn the denial of bail to the peaceful democratic activists in Hong Kong, who were targeted & charged for exercising their rights,” Nancy Pelosi wrote on her Twitter page.
“This action is an acceleration of Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong, against which Congress will continue to speak out.”
Pelosi was responding to a court decision in Hong Kong to turn down the bail applications of 32 out of 47 people charged with conspiracy to subvert state power. The other 15 were granted bail by the presiding national security magistrate, but they had to be remanded in custody again after government prosecutors from the Department of Justice appealed against the decision.
A Hong Kong campaigner in Washington said that what happened in court this week was “a political purge and a stunt.”
“The once highly regarded Hong Kong judiciary was hijacked and used as propaganda for the National People’s Congress ‘two sessions’ beginning Thursday,” Samuel Chu, managing director of Hong Kong Democracy Council, said in a statement issued on Thursday, referring to annual meetings of the Chinese state legislature.
“The decision to detain the 47 en masse was made to set the stage for further assaults on the electoral system already announced by Beijing.”
Chu, the younger son of Occupy Central co-founder Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, urged the world to condemn the legal charges in the strongest terms possible, as “this is not the time for the U.S. or any free nation to grow numb or to give the [Chinese Communist Party] and Hong Kong government a pass because of economic or other political interests.”
He also urged the United Nations to appoint a special mandate holder to report on human rights in the city, to adopt and coordinate “safe harbor” policies to protect Hongkongers, and to consider a boycott of the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing.
The U.S. must lead a joint response with partner countries to impose sanctions against officials responsible for and involved with the political persecution, and file a case before the International Court of Justice to hold the Beijing government accountable for violating the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, the statement added.
In Britain, Hong Kong Watch chief executive Benedict Rogers strongly condemned the bail decision and the NPC’s electoral reforms as a further blow to Hong Kong.
The denial of bail to many of the most moderate members of the pro-democracy camp in the city was an appalling step which stripped them of basic human dignity, Rogers said.
The impending decision around electoral reform would ensure that “the majority of the population are never able to take control of the Legislative Council,” he added.
“The result will be that there is never meaningful hope of the democrats winning ever — doubtless this is Beijing’s intention, but it is another breach of international law.” He also questioned why Hong Kong’s Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng was still a fellow of King’s College London.
Luke de Pulford, a member of the British Conservative Party’s Human Rights Commission, retweeted a post about the Hong Kong court’s decision. He reminded people that “the person cruelly attempting to overturn the bail” was Cheng, who held a fellowship at the London school.
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