Hong Kong, China:
A Hong Kong government proposal that could give “apparently unfettered power” to the immigration director to cease any individual from leaving the city is deeply regarding, barristers stated Friday.
Hong Kong’s influential Bar Association (HKBA) submitted a paper to the city’s legislative council expressing alarm more than the law, which could bar any person — Hong Kong resident or not — from boarding a carrier out of the monetary hub.
Since the imposition of a new national safety law final June, an growing quantity of democracy activists and politicians have fled the monetary hub and gone into exile, as China tightens its grip on the semi-autonomous city.
The political predicament has also prompted an exodus of Hong Kongers in basic, quite a few of whom are taking up immigration plans provided by areas like the UK, Canada and nearby Taiwan.
In late January, the city’s government proposed amending an current law to empower the director of immigration to bar an person from leaving without having very first going by means of a court.
“It is particularly troubling that the grounds on which such an intrusive power may be exercised are not stated in the proposed legislation, and no explanation for why such a power is necessary, or even how it is intended to be used, is set out,” HKBA stated in the submission on Friday.
“If a new power to prevent Hong Kong residents and others from leaving the region is to be conferred… It should be for the courts, not the director, to decide when it is necessary and proportionate to impose a travel ban,” it added.
It also pointed out that there are current powers to avert a individual from leaving Hong Kong, like the newly implemented safety law which can demand the surrender of travel documents in particular situations.
The have to have for additional legislation is “difficult to understand,” it concluded.
Since Beijing’s imposition of the national safety law to snuff out massive and usually violent democracy protests, almost one hundred people today, like democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai and prominent activist Joshua Wong have been arrested.
Four of them have been officially charged with crimes that could bring them life imprisonment if convicted.
Last August, a dozen activists have been arrested by the Chinese coastguard when they attempted to flee the city to Taiwan by boat.
Most of these aboard the vessel had been charged in Hong Kong for alleged offences linked to 2019’s protests, and one of them was arrested below the safety law.
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