Outrage in Hong Kong as China pushes security law

HONG KONG: Pro-democracy campaigners in Hong Kong vowed Friday to take to the streets in protest over what they said was China´s fiercest assault on the city´s treasured autonomy with its move to impose a security law.

The proposal for the legislation — expected to ban treason, subversion and sedition — was introduced into China´s rubber-stamp parliament at the opening of its annual session on Friday morning.

It followed repeated warnings from China´s communist leaders they would no longer tolerate dissent in Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous city that endured seven months of massive pro-democracy protests last year.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday slammed Beijing over a proposed new security law for Hong Kong and warned that the semi-autonomous territory could lose its special trading privileges.

“The decision to bypass Hong Kong’s well-established legislative processes and ignore the will of the people of Hong Kong would be a death knell for the high degree of autonomy Beijing promised for Hong Kong,” Pompeo said in a statement.

Pompeo indicated that the move could lead the United States to decline to certify Hong Kong as autonomous under a new US law, attacked by Beijing, that was meant to show support to months of pro-democracy protests.

“The United States strongly urges Beijing to reconsider its disastrous proposal, abide by its international obligations, and respect Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, democratic institutions and civil liberties.”