China plans to establish a special bureau in Hong Kong to investigate and prosecute crimes considered threatening to national security, according to details of a controversial new national security law Beijing is imposing on the semi-autonomous territory.
In addition, bodies in all Hong Kong government departments, from finance to immigration, will be directly answerable to the central government in Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday.
The announcement increases concerns that China’s communist government will continue to tighten its grip on Hong Kong. Beijing has said it is determined to press ahead with the national security legislation — which has been strongly criticized as undermining the Asian financial hub’s legal and political institutions — despite heavy criticism from within Hong Kong and abroad.
The details of the proposed national security law emerged as the body that handles most lawmaking for China’s legislature closed its latest meeting. The bill was raised for discussion at the meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress but there was no further word on its fate, Xinhua said.
Legal experts say Beijing’s justifications for the law are debatable.
The Hong Kong Bar Association on Friday called on the city’s government to reveal details of the bill and warned that the law’s enforcement in Hong Kong risked setting up a system of conflicting parallel legal standards dominated by Beijing.
“It raises the question whether individuals will be tried within the criminal justice system in [Hong Kong] by the Hong Kong courts or sent to the Mainland for trial and serve any terms of imprisonment in Mainland prisons,” the bar association said in a statement.
China has sought to assuage concerns by saying the new legislation would only target “acts and activities that severely undermine national security,” according to Xinhua.
Earlier this month, Hong Kong’s legislature approved a contentious bill making it illegal to insult the Chinese national anthem after pro-democracy lawmakers boycotted the vote out of protest. MDT/AP
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