With John Lee at helm, what now for EU and Hong Kong?

The appointment of Lee comes as no shock. A profession cop and former safety chief previous to his promotion as Hong Kong’s second-in-command final June, Lee was instrumental in spearheading Hong Kong’s nationwide safety crackdown in response to town’s widespread pro-democracy motion in 2019.

As town’s safety tsar, Lee oversaw an increase in police brutality, together with proof of torture and mistreatment of protesters, in addition to the arrests of greater than 100 activists, together with 47 of Hong Kong’s most outstanding politicians and pro-democracy figures.

Civil society teams, too, have suffered the wrath of the Lee-led safety crackdown.

Because the draconian nationwide safety regulation was imposed by Beijing in 2020, greater than 50 organisations, together with commerce unions and rights defenders, have been forcefully dismantled or disbanded in concern of regime reprisals.

And in one in every of his lasting, most malign acts as safety secretary, Lee directed and later defended police raids on the now-defunct impartial newspaper, Apple Every day, which led to the arrests of a number of of the outlet’s senior executives and editors.

Shuttering newspapers

The assault on Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy paper set a harmful precedent for the shuttering of different impartial publications, together with Stand Information and Citizen Information, and irrevocably broken Hong Kong’s press freedoms.

Lee’s ascendancy due to this fact clearly alerts the Chinese language Communist Occasion’s (CCP) uncompromising intentions for Hong Kong’s future.

As analysts have famous, although the Hong Kong regime has crushed a lot of the territory’s pro-democracy ambitions, the totalitarian securitisation of the area stays Beijing’s paramount concern.

Lee has additionally pledged to enact Hong Kong’s personal nationwide safety regulation as a precedence.

This fanatical obsession with safety — or reasonably, eradicating any remaining vestiges of dissent — comes regardless of town nonetheless reeling from one of many world’s worst man-made Covid-19 crises.

With Lee’s appointment as Hong Kong’s subsequent chief govt all however confirmed, the destiny of town’s dwindling democratic values seems bleaker than ever. Subsequently, it’s of renewed and utmost significance that right here within the European Union, we proceed to confront the CCP’s systematic abuses and steadfastly defend Hongkongers’ elementary freedoms via concrete and concerted motion.

While the European Parliament has been a staunch supporter of Hongkongers — passing plenty of resolutions calling for focused sanctions, lifeboat schemes, an finish to extradition preparations and a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics — the EU Council and the EU Fee have continued to lag far behind.

Regardless of the council agreeing a sequence of measures in response to the nationwide safety regulation way back to July 2020, together with facilitating the migration and asylum of susceptible Hongkongers and the suspension of remaining extradition treaties with China and Hong Kong putting activists in danger, this inertia persists, because the bloc has nonetheless but to totally implement these primary measures.

In the meantime, throughout the Atlantic, the US has repeatedly sanctioned Hong Kong and Chinese language officers, together with Lee, responsible of gross human rights violations and the degradation of town’s enshrined freedoms, while the EU has constantly hesitated to take related measures.

As a substitute, officers have opted for mere expressions of concern which have lengthy since ceased to have any moderating impact in Beijing or Hong Kong.

If the EU is critical about its dedication to democratic values and human rights in Hong Kong, then it should stand by these rules when the going will get powerful. With John Lee on the helm, the EU should leverage all diplomatic and casual channels to place stress on Hong Kong and Chinese language officers concerning their norm-breaking behaviours.

To this finish, Lee have to be added to the EU’s world human rights sanctions record, whereas the EU should additionally take into consideration the deteriorating state of Hong Kong’s human rights if negotiations on the at present frozen EU-China Complete Settlement on Funding are to be resumed.