WASHINGTON: The US on Monday (Mar 31) sanctioned six senior Chinese language and Hong Kong officers for “transnational repression” and actions it stated eroded the autonomy of Hong Kong, one of many first strikes by the brand new Trump administration to punish China over its crackdown on democracy advocates in Hong Kong.
“Beijing and Hong Kong officers have used Hong Kong nationwide safety legal guidelines extraterritorially to intimidate, silence, and harass 19 pro-democracy activists who had been pressured to flee abroad, together with a US citizen and 4 different US residents,” the State Division stated in an announcement.
In response, the US is sanctioning six people who’ve “engaged in actions or insurance policies that threaten to additional erode the autonomy of Hong Kong in contravention of China’s commitments, and in reference to acts of transnational repression,” it stated.
Western international locations have criticized Beijing for imposing the nationwide safety legislation on Hong Kong and utilizing it to jail pro-democracy activists, in addition to shutter liberal media shops and civil society teams.
Chinese language and Hong Kong authorities say the legislation, which punishes subversion, collusion with overseas forces and terrorism with as much as life in jail, has introduced stability to the Chinese language-controlled territory after giant scale anti-government protests there in 2019.
The sanctions introduced on Monday put blocks on any property throughout the US that may belong to the people, together with Dong Jingwei, a former senior official at China’s fundamental civilian intelligence company who’s now the director of Beijing’s Workplace for Safeguarding Nationwide Safety in Hong Kong.
Dong was beforehand China’s high spy catcher who had oversight of counter-intelligence. He was additionally vice minister of state safety, a high-profile position which included looking down overseas spies in China and nationals who colluded with overseas international locations.
Sonny Au, Dick Wong, Margaret Chiu, Raymond Siu and Paul Lam, all safety or police officers in Hong Kong, had been additionally sanctioned for his or her involvement within the “coercing, arresting, detaining, or imprisoning of people” beneath Hong Kong’s Nationwide Safety Legislation.
