GENEVA: The UN watchdog voiced alarm on Wednesday (Jul 27) in deteriorating rights within Hong Kong, especially calling on the Chinese territory to repeal the particular sweeping national protection law imposed simply by Beijing two years back.
The UN Human Rights Committee, made up of 18 independent experts, said it was “deeply worried about the overly wide interpretation of plus arbitrary application of the law”.
It said that the law acquired reportedly led to “the arrests of over 200 persons considering that its enactment in 2020, including 12 children, on environment of endangering nationwide security”.
The committee, which oversees respect for worldwide rules on civil and political legal rights, said Hong Kong need to “take concrete steps to repeal the current nationwide security law and, in the meantime, refrain from applying the law”.
The 2020 security law, imposed amid a sweeping crackdown after protests swallowed up the city, criminalised subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.
In the fourth regular review of Hong Kong, which previously this month proclaimed the 25th anniversary of its handover from Britain, the particular committee lamented the security law had been enacted “without assessment with public and civil society” within the city.
This warned that the protection law’s “lack of clarity” made it hard to determine what behaviours and conduct constituted a criminal offence.
It also decried which the law resuscitated sedition as an offence for the first time in years, pointing to just how it was used to charge academics, journalists and more “for having worked out their legitimate directly to freedom of presentation. ”
“The Committee is concerned about the adverse effect of the overly broad decryption and arbitrary application of the national safety law and sedition legislation, and its effect on the exercise associated with freedom of manifestation, ” it stated.
The committee lamented that nationwide security cases had been transferred to Chinese jurisdiction, as well as “the excessive power” afforded in order to Hong Kong’s leader under the law.
This, it cautioned, “can effectively challenge the independence of judiciary and step-by-step safeguards for access to justice and right to a fair trial”.
Once the law continues to be repealed, the committee called for the legislative process around enacting any new nationwide security law to become “inclusive and clear, facilitating the free of charge, open and significant participation of municipal society and the public”.