HONG KONG — The Hong Kong government proposed legislation Monday that would allow the city’s leader to designate certain criminal acts as national security offenses, stepping up its efforts to stamp out challenges to its rules in the city where critics say freedoms have been eroding.
After massive democracy protests rocked the Asian financial hub in 2019, Beijing imposed a national security law that has been used to arrest many leading activists. The city’s government in 2024 enacted another security law, targeting other crimes such as espionage and disclosing state secrets.
Critics said the two security laws have stifled the city’s Western-style civil liberties that Beijing had promised to maintain when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997. But the authorities insist the laws are crucial for the city’s stability.
Hong Kong leader John Lee said Tuesday many activities endangering national security “are committed by state players” elsewhere and the sensitive information involved is privy to the chief executive, so the city leader bears such responsibility. Lee said he would exercise the power with prudence and seriousness.
“Having a clearer mechanism of classifying offenses endangering national security will have the benefit of reducing the risk of controversies or debates in court,” he said.
The Security Bureau and the Department of Justice on Monday submitted a document to the legislature proposing that subsidiary legislation clearly state the procedures for classifying “other offenses endangering national security under the law.”
They said if the chief executive ascertained that the act in a criminal case involved national security, then the case would fall into that category.
If a suspect is charged with a national security offense, but also faces an alternative charge for the same act, then that alternative charge will also be considered as an offense endangering national security, they said.
“Amid the present complicated geopolitical landscape, national security risks still exist. Stating clearly the above mechanism by way of subsidiary legislation can improve the legal system and enforcement mechanisms for Hong Kong to safeguard national security,” they said in the document.
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