British Member of Parliament Denied Entry
British Member of Parliament Wera Hobhouse was denied entry to Hong Kong last Thursday on a personal trip to see her grandchild. She was stopped by security, interviewed and ultimately sent home.
In a post on Bluesky, Hobhouse said: “I am the first [Member of Parliament] to be refused entry on arrival to Hong Kong since 1997. Authorities gave me no explanation for this cruel and upsetting blow.” British Foreign Secretary David Lammy has said he will “seek answers” from China’s government.
Hobhouse has previously spoken out about rights issues in Hong Kong and Tibet. She is also a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, commonly known as IPAC, an alliance of parliamentarians from democratic countries focused on relations with China. Several other IPAC members from the U.K. have previously been banned from entering China.
Democratic Party Shutting Down
Hong Kong’s oldest democratic party took a further step toward shutting down last weekend, after its remaining members voted to proceed with plans that were set out in February.
In March, Democratic Party Chairman Lo Kin-hei (羅健熙) told a press conference the decision was based on the current political situation and social climate. The party was founded in 1994.
Pro-democracy candidates have effectively been barred from running for seats in district councils since the introduction of the 2020 National Security Law, but the Democratic Party has held news briefings and submitted opinions on proposed national security legislation to the government since then.
Acquittal for Former Democratic Party Lawmaker Reversed
At the start of April, Lam Cheuk-ting (林卓廷), a former lawmaker for the Democratic Party, had his acquittal for disclosing a police officer’s misconduct probe reversed.
In January 2022, Lam was sentenced to four months in prison for revealing that a police officer was under investigation for playing a role in a mob attack during 2019 protests against the introduction of the national security law. In February 2024, the lower appeals court acquitted Lam on the grounds his case was not covered by bribery laws, which are more stringent regarding secrecy.
U.S. Sanctions on Officials
The U.S. imposed sanctions on six Chinese and Hong Kong officials at the end of March, aimed at punishing China for its crackdown on democracy advocates in Hong Kong.
Nineteen-year-old Chloe Cheung (張晞晴) became one of six activists to be newly listed as wanted in December, which brought the total of exiled Hong Kongers with arrest warrants and bounties against them to 19. They say they have faced harassment in person and online since then.
The U.S. State Department said “Beijing and Hong Kong officials have used Hong Kong national security laws extraterritorially to intimidate, silence, and harass 19 pro-democracy activists who were forced to flee overseas, including a U.S. citizen and four other U.S. residents.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X that China has “broken its promises” over Hong Kong’s autonomy, “depriving Hong Kongers of freedoms” and pursuing “acts of transnational repression targeting activists on US soil.”
The sanctioned officials have had U.S.-based assets frozen.
Chinese state media outlet China Daily said the sanctions were “tantamount to interference” in China’s internal affairs and were “premised on the assumption that human rights must be defined according to US foreign policy and align with its national interests.”
Court Rules in Favor of Activist
At the start of March, Chow Hang-tung (鄒幸彤) and two other leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China had their convictions for refusing to comply with a Hong Kong police request quashed.
The police request Chow refused to comply with was related to the disclosure of information about the pro-democracy group’s funding, activities, board members, executives and staff after they had been accused of being a “foreign agent.” The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China previously organised the annual candlelight vigil to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre.
At Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal, five judges ruled that prosecutors had redacted key facts in the original case that had “deprived the appellants of a fair trial, so that their convictions involved a miscarriage of justice.”
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