‘Freedom Is Being Crushed’: Lawmakers Denounce Hong Kong’s New National Security Law

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other lawmakers recently condemned draconian legislation in Hong Kong enacted with the support of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The Safeguarding National Security Bill, Article 23, took effect on March 23. It was proposed by the CCP-controlled Hong Kong Legislative Council in 2003, but its implementation was hamstrung at that time by local protests and international public outcry.

Just over 20 years later, the CCP has rammed the policy through the Hong Kong legislature with almost no local opposition, a follow-up to its draconian national security law, implemented in 2020.

“It’s … a total betrayal,” Ms. Pelosi said at a press conference at the Capitol on March 22, referring to the CCP’s reneging on its 1997 “one country two systems” agreement to extend greater autonomy to Hong Kong. She described the new law as an “alarming expansion of the Communist Chinese Party’s assault on freedom in Hong Kong.”

“The political opposition is completely wiped out,” said Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.). Smith cited the example of Apple Daily publisher Jimmy Lai, jailed in 2021 for alleged unauthorized assembly and now standing trial for conspiracy to collude with foreign forces.

“Freedom is being crushed,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). Smith and Merkley are co-chairs of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, a bipartisan panel tasked with investigating human rights violations in China.

Bipartisan Resistance

While all three legislators praised the bipartisan reaction to China’s efforts since 2019, Mr.  Smith placed blame for the current situation at the feet of a similar bipartisan effort during the Bill Clinton administration, which regularized trade with China by divorcing human rights concerns from “favored-nation” trade status.

Ms. Pelosi also said, “We fail to speak out on human rights violations in China because of commercial interest.”

Mr. Smith and Mr. Merkely called on Congress to pass countermeasures such as the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office Certification Act (HKETO), and the Transnational Repression Policy Act, which would stifle international retaliation against political dissidents.

Mr. Smith said that HKETO had already undergone a debate before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, but “for inexplicable reasons” it was pulled from the list of bills headed for a floor vote last week. The offices of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) did not respond to queries from The Epoch Times about why the bill was removed from the floor schedule.

The legislators were joined by political refugees Anna Kwok and Frances Hui, two young women being pursued by  Hong Kong authorities. Each carries a government-sponsored bounty of HK$1 million (US$128,000) on their heads.

Ms. Hui brought up the issue of religious persecution of Christians and Falun Gong by the CCP. Under the new law, she said, the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong could be forced to sever relations with the Vatican and join the government-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association of China. “I am afraid that the future of religious communities would really be at stake,” she said.

Priests could also be forced to choose between violating the seal of confession, or else face a 14-year prison sentence for not disclosing information about Hong Kong citizens who broke the law, she warned.

Businessman and activist Elmer Yuen, who is also pursued under bounty by authorities, had a forceful message for his fellow Hongkongers: “There’s no use crying, there’s no use campaigning. In order for us to return to Hong Kong, we must get rid of the CCP once and for all.”