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UK PM urged to form alliance over China security law
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IANS | 01 Jun, 2020
Seven former UK Foreign Secretaries have urged Prime Minister Boris
Johnson to form a global alliance over China's controversial national
security law for Hong Kong.
In their letter to Johnson, the
cross-party group comprising Jeremy Hunt, David Miliband, Jack Straw,
William Hague, Malcolm Rifkind, David Owen and Margaret Beckett, said
that the UK government must be seen to lead the international response,
as many countries take their cue from Britain over its former colony,
the BBC reported on Monday.
All the former Secretaries expressed
their concern at what they call China's "flagrant breach" of
Sino-British agreements by imposing tough national security laws on Hong
Kong.
They urged Johnson to set up an "international contact
group" of allies to coordinate any joint action, similar to that set up
in 1994 to try to end the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
In
response, a Downing Street spokesman insisted the government was already
playing a leading role with international partners in urging China to
think again.
Incumbent Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the
new security legislation "very clearly violates" the autonomy that is
guaranteed under Chinese law as well as that in the 1997 agreement.
He
confirmed the UK will allow those who hold British National (Overseas)
passports to come to the UK and apply to study and work for an
extendable 12-month period.
This will in turn "provide a path to citizenship", he told the BBC on Sunday.
China
is facing mounting criticism over a planned security law for Hong Kong
which would make it a crime to undermine Beijing's authority, said the
BBC report.
Hong Kong was handed back to China from British control in 1997 but under a unique agreement.
The
former British colony enjoys some freedoms not seen in mainland China -
and these are set out in a mini-constitution called the Basic Law.
But
there are fears the proposed law, which has sparked a mass of
anti-mainland protests in Hong Kong, could compromise some of the
freedoms guaranteed by the Basic Law.
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