HONG KONG — Hong Kong unveiled a proposed law that threatens life imprisonment for residents who “endanger national security" on Friday, deepening worries about erosion of the city’s freedoms four years after Beijing imposed a similar law that all but wiped out public dissent.
The law would jail people who damage public infrastructure with the intent to endanger national security for 20 years — or life, if they collude with an external force to do so. In 2019, protesters occupied the airport and vandalized railway stations. The European Union said the bill covers “an even wider range” of offenses than previously disclosed, including sweeping bans on external interference and significantly hardened provisions on sentencing.
The legislature's president, Andrew Leung, told reporters that the process was accelerated because the bill was necessary to safeguard national security. Such protests against the current bill are unlikely, due to the chilling effect of the 2020 law after it was enacted to quell the 2019 protests. The bill, if passed as tabled, is likely to have chilling effect on local civil society, Burns said, especially political and public policy lobby groups that have benefited from connections to overseas counterparts.
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