- EURASIAREVIEW.COM - A la une - 30/Jun 00:15

China: Building A ‘Patriots Only’ Hong Kong, HRW Says

China’s government has erased Hong Kong’s freedoms since imposing the draconian National Security Law on June 30, 2020, Human Rights Watch said. Chinese and Hong Kong authorities have harshly punished critics of the government, created a highly repressive national security regime, and enforced ideological controls on the city’s residents. Increasingly, only Chinese Communist Party loyalists – that is, “patriots” – can occupy key positions in society. “In just five years, the Chinese government has extinguished Hong Kong’s political and civil vibrancy and replaced it with the uniformity of enforced patriotism,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch. “This heightened oppression may have dire long-term consequences for Hong Kong, even though many Hong Kongers have found subtle ways to resist tyrannical rule.” Since adopting the National Security Law, the Chinese government has largely dismantled freedoms of expression, association and assembly, as well as free and fair elections, fair trial rights and judicial independence. The government has increasingly politicized education, created impunity for police abuses, and ended the city’s semi-democracy. Many of Hong Kong’s independent civil society groups, labor unions, political parties, and media outlets have been shuttered. The Chinese government has been building a new and opaque national security legal regime and bureaucracy, weaponizing the courts to hand down severe punishment for dissent – up to life in prison – and harassing and surveilling Hong Kongers at home and abroad. The authorities are also rewriting Hong Kong’s history. When Britain handed over Hong Kong’s sovereignty to China in 1997, Beijing promised a “high degree of autonomy” and that “Hong Kong people rule Hong Kong.” Since 2020, the Chinese Communist Party – which is not even registered as a political party in Hong Kong – has extended its control over all levers of government in Hong Kong, by embedding Beijing’s concept of national security into Hong Kong laws, and by revamping the city’s governance structure. Several other governments and the United Nations have expressed concernabout the rapid deterioration of freedoms in Hong Kong, but few have taken concrete actions. The United States imposed sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials in 2020, 2021, and 2025 for abuses associated with the National Security Law, but was the only government to do so. The United Kingdom, the European Union, and Australia, which also have human rights sanctions regimes, should impose targeted sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials most responsible for serious rights violations, Human Rights Watch said. “Governments should press the Chinese government to end its repressive policies in Hong Kong by holding responsible officials to account,” Wang said, “Beijing should no longer feel emboldened to tighten its grip on Hong Kong people without consequences.”