UK’s Prime Minister offers visa tranquillity to 3 million Hong Kong people
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has made known that the United Kingdom will reflect on revisions in its immigration rules, giving more Hong Kong inhabitants a way to residency and citizenship, amidst China’s scheme to impose a new national security law in the city.
“If China imposes its national security law, the British government will change our immigration rules,” Johnson wrote in an opinion piece published in the South China Morning Post on Wednesday.
Johnson’s support in the paper was published as Hong Kong strive to clamp down on lack of agreement and pro-democracy activities, inclusive of the prohibition, for the first time, of the yearly June 4 vigil honouring victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
A disputed bill that will make it unlawful “disrespect” of China’s national anthem is also due for a second reading in the territory’s legislature on Wednesday.
Since Hong Kong go back to Chinese rule in 1997, Johnson said that “the key has been the precious concept of ‘one country, two systems’, enshrined in city’s Basic Law and the Joint Declaration signed by Britain and China”.
He said forcing the national security law “would be in direct conflict with (China’s) obligations under the Joint Declaration, a legally binding treaty registered with the United Nations.”
Johnson notifie that what Beijing was putting forward in Hong Kong “would curtail its freedoms and dramatically erode its autonomy”.
In retaliation, Johnson said that “if necessary”, the British government would take moves to welcome more Hong Kong inhabitants to the UK.
Source___Aljazeera
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