Ihe repeated intentions of Chinese President Xi Jinping to take control of Taiwan and make it an integrated part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China are of growing concern. Intimidations of all kinds, in particular the multiplication of violations of land space and maritime space, continue to multiply. Beijing even calls a possible meeting between Tsai Ing-wen, the democratically elected president of Taiwan, with Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the United States House of Representatives, a double provocation.
Even if China has long thought that the passage of time is always its best ally, it now seems obvious that Xi’s China has, in all areas, decided to accelerate history. The situation experienced by Hong Kong for three years is a good illustration of this desire to extend the Middle Kingdom in defiance of previously ratified treaties. The 1984 Sino-British agreements on handover provided for the establishment of a statute protecting the specific institutional rules that governed Hong Kong at least until 2047.
But since the 2019 pro-democracy protests denouncing repeated interference by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the situation in Hong Kong has deteriorated considerably. The current Hong Kong puppet government, totally subservient to Beijing, has imposed new restrictions on freedoms thanks to the national security law, which came into force in June 2020. Today, there are thousands of arrests, many ongoing trials, closed institutions; hundreds of thousands of people have already had to leave Hong Kong to escape repression.
In July 2022, the Committee on the Human Rights of United Nations concluded that this national security law violated civil and political rights, and recommended its immediate repeal. In March 2023, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights also found that the National Security Act violated the rights of journalists and academics.
Unfailing solidarity
We must therefore continue to monitor the situation in Hong Kong and draw attention to the outcome of the trial of the “47 Democrats”. [procès collectif de militants prodémocratie, jugés pour avoir enfreint la loi sur la sécurité nationale, commencé début février, et qui doit durer quatre-vingt-dix jours]on the fate of journalists from Booth News and the growing number of political prisoners.
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