HONG KONG — Hong Kong unveiled a new national security bill Friday that proposes up to life imprisonment for offenses like treason and insurrection, a move deepening worries over further erosion of the city’s freedoms after Beijing imposed a similar law four years ago that all but wiped out dissent.
The proposed law will expand the government’s power in stamping out future challenges to its rule, targeting insurrection, external interference and protection of state secrets among others.
Under a push by Hong Kong leader John Lee to finish the legislative process “at full speed,” lawmakers are set to begin their debate Friday in a meeting that was specially arranged to expedite it. The bill is expected to pass easily, possibly in weeks, in a legislature packed with Beijing loyalists following an electoral overhaul.
Critics have warned the legislation will make Hong Kong’s legal framework increasingly similar to that of mainland China, and add to a decline in civil liberties that were promised to remain intact for 50 years when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
However, the government pointed to the massive anti-government protests that rocked the city in 2019 to justify its necessity, insisting it would only affect “an extremely small minority” of disloyal residents.
Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, requires the city to enact a home-grown national security law. But a previous attempt to pass a version of the law sparked a massive street protest that drew half a million people, and the legislation was shelved.
A huge demonstration against the new bill is unlikely to repeat under the chilling effect of the 2020 security law. After its enactment to quell the 2019 protests, many of the city’s leading pro-democracy activists have been arrested and others fled abroad. Dozens of civil society groups have been disbanded, and outspoken media outlets like Apple Daily and Stand News have been shut down.
During a one-month public comment period that just ended last week, 98.6% of the views received by officials showed support, and only 0.72% opposed the proposals, the government said.
The rest purely contain questions or opinions that cannot reflect the authors’ stance, it added.
But business people and journalists have expressed fear that a broadly framed law could criminalize their day-to-day work.