I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice in order to support the new hybrid arrangements. I remind Members participating that they must remain here for the entire debate. I must also remind Members participating virtually that they are visible at all times, both to each other and to us in the Boothroyd Room. If Members are attending virtually and have any technical problems, they should email the Westminster Hall Clerks. The email address is westminsterhallclerks@parliament.uk.
Members attending physically should clean their spaces before they use them and as they leave the room. I remind Members that Mr Speaker has stated that masks should be worn unless you are speaking. Members attending physically who are in the latter stages of the call list should use the seats in the Public Gallery and move on to the horseshoe when seats become available. Members can only speak from the horseshoe, where there are microphones.
2:31 pm
Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered human rights in Hong Kong.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. This is the first Westminster Hall debate that I have initiated. It is a privilege to speak, and I am grateful that this debate has been selected. I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will understand it when I say that I wish I was not here. I wish none of us was here today to discuss this matter. This debate was entirely avoidable had international obligations been met.
Let me say at the outset what this debate is not about. It is not about colonialism or interference by a former colonial power. In his final act as Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten telegrammed London to announce,
“I have relinquished the administration of this government.”
The 156 years of British rule over Hong Kong ended on 1 July 1997, and we are not here to debate taking it back.
Hong Kong was handed over to China following an agreement that took the form of an international treaty lodged at the United Nations, which both the United Kingdom and the People’s Republic of China entered into freely. It is right that we consider whether that agreement—the Sino-British joint declaration on the question of Hong Kong—is being upheld and whether it meets our and Hongkongers’ legitimate expectations.
The joint declaration was signed in December 1984. The text sets out the basis on which Hong Kong would be returned to China. It states:
“The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will be vested with executive, legislative and independent judicial power, including that of final adjudication. The laws currently in force in Hong Kong will remain basically unchanged.”
It goes on to say:
“The current social and economic systems in Hong Kong will remain unchanged, and so will the life-style. Rights and freedoms, including those of the person, of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of travel, of movement, of correspondence, of strike, of choice of occupation, of academic research and of religious belief will be ensured by law in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.”
I submit to you, Ms Ghani, that all those rights and freedoms have been diminished in modern-day Hong Kong.
Last year, China passed a national security law for Hong Kong that created a number of chilling measures. A new security office with its own personnel has been established by China in Hong Kong, outside local jurisdiction. Some criminal cases can now be tried in mainland China. Hong Kong’s Chief Executive has the power to appoint judges to hear national security cases.
What we are seeing in Hong Kong is a two-pronged assault on truth. First, China attacks the source of truth—reporting—by threatening and expelling journalists who expose the extent of China’s authoritarian behaviour. Secondly, China creates an Orwellian alternative narrative in which those who tell the truth are the liars, and those who commit violent acts of repression are the liberators.
China’s leaders hate journalism. At the end of March, the BBC’s China correspondent was driven out of Hong Kong. Plain-clothes goons followed him and his family to the airport. This was not an isolated case. Most independent foreign correspondents have now been expelled, as Beijing proceeds to eliminate the last vestiges of Hong Kong’s freedom. With this in mind, it is hardly surprising to see China being ranked by the World Press Freedom Index as one of the worst countries in the world for media freedoms; it is ranked a dismal 177th.
Once upon a time, some thought that Hong Kong could be a beacon for China, spreading its values to the mainland. Instead, the opposite has happened. Under its current leader, China has become ever more controlling and hostile to the truth. Hong Kong is merely the latest victim of a malign system that has trampled on press freedoms, democracy, cultural and religious minorities, and once independent nations, as the downtrodden and oppressed people of Tibet, the Uyghurs and many others can testify.
Journalistic censorship is paired with other despotic trademarks, disinformation being the foremost. In the digital world in which we live, it is not enough for the Chinese leadership to stem information coming from legitimate news outlets; information from normal citizens must also be quashed. China employs what is sometimes called the 50 cent army, so-called because of their meagre daily pay. Thought to number millions, these Communist party drones track online activity and work to sway public opinion with disinformation both inside China and outwith. Bots counter unfavourable reports and conversations about the Chinese regime.
Ms Ghani, it is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your stewardship.
I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Tom Randall) for securing this debate, on what is indeed the issue of the moment. It has not gone away; it will not go away. The debate is timely, because the G7 starts its meeting tomorrow and, frankly, if its major conclusion is not that China has become the greatest threat to liberal democracy here and around the world, it will have failed. It is as simple as that.
Today, we are talking about Hong Kong, but we could just as easily be talking about the suppression—nay, the genocide—of the Uyghurs; or about the suppression—nay, the genocide—of Tibetans; or about the increasing pressure on the Inner Mongolians, the Falun Gong or Christians. This is a regime that is intolerant, dictatorial and brutal. It accepts no difference from its dictated opinions and views, and any attempt to question it is treated with brutality and incarceration, without any possibility of a free or serious trial.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling is quite right to have made the point that this regime has now trashed a particular international agreement. It has broken what it agreed to do regarding the rights, privileges and freedoms in Hong Kong under the “one state, two systems” model. I suspect that the real reason for that is that the Chinese Communist party signed the original Sino-British agreement only because it believed that it would act as a magnet for the reintroduction of Taiwan completely under the umbrella of its state authority. The problem is that the elected Government in Taiwan rejects that future. On that basis, China can see no reason why it should continue with this troublesome area in Hong Kong, where people have been campaigning —we would say legitimately and freely—for the right to express their views, for a free press, and for democracy. For the Chinese Government, that is no longer necessary. The suppression that has followed has been swift, but in a way somewhat predictable; without the reason for Hong Kong to exist in this separate state, it must now be crushed.
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gedling (Tom Randall) on bringing this important and vital matter before the House. It is always an honour to speak after the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), who made an excellent speech. If ever, as a country and as a people, we should be thankful for our freedom to worship and to think openly—our freedoms generally—it must be today when we consider the weight of the matter before us.
I speak as a member of the all-party parliamentary group on Hong Kong. I will focus my comments specifically on article 38 of the Hong Kong national security law. If we look at that law and its full effect, it makes this meeting of Parliament and every single one of us here today, as well as those who are watching the proceedings, guilty of breaching that national security law.
Under article 38, the global extraterritorial jurisdiction remit, those measures mean that each of us could stand accused of collusion, sedition, terrorism and subversion against China with a foreign country. Just think of that: China has reached into this country and effectively passed a law that says that what we dare to talk about today is unlawful and that we could be held accountable for it if we went over to Hong Kong or China. Anyone who has lobbied us about this matter would also be guilty under that law.
Even friends of Beijing—there may be some MPs who are attending this debate or watching it who are openly or secretly friends of Beijing—are vulnerable because they have spoken about, participated in or associated themselves with the seditious practice that article 38 of the national security law brings about. As an officer of the APPG on Hong Kong, I certainly would not expect to go to Hong Kong anytime soon; neither should any hon. Member attending the debate.
May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani? I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Tom Randall) for securing this important and timely debate on Hong Kong and add my voice in support of the arguments he made so powerfully this afternoon.
Last Friday marked the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, when the Chinese Communist party brutally repressed pro-democracy protests in 1989, killing thousands and causing panic among Hongkongers, many of whom were refugees from Chairman Mao’s purges and feared authoritarian communist rule. That was five years after Margaret Thatcher had signed the Sino-British joint declaration with Deng Xiaoping, agreeing to hand over Hong Kong to China in 1987. In 1982, Deng told Mrs Thatcher that he could
“walk in and take the whole lot this afternoon”
if he wanted to, to which she replied, if he did,
“the eyes of the world would now know what China is like.”
Well, the Tiananmen Square massacre showed the world what China was really like, and its disregard for the rights of its own citizens.
The Sino-British joint declaration was supposed to guarantee Hong Kong’s freedom, the rule of law and a way of life unchanged for a period of 50 years. It was a legally binding treaty, lodged at the United Nations, underpinning Hong Kong’s mini- constitution and provided the Basic Law with freedom of expression, a free press and an independent judiciary, and the right of Hongkongers to participate in free elections. However, the national security law introduced by Beijing is nothing less than an all-out assault on the autonomy of Hong Kong and its freedoms and a complete violation of that treaty. The pace of the decline of one of the most open and international cities in Asia is shocking and should alarm each and every one of us.
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Ghani. The UK Government have abandoned the people of Hong Kong, who once shared much of their national identity with ours. That is shameful. Over the past year we have had countless debates on the atrocious actions of the Chinese regime, but its human rights abuses continue, and we cannot condone that. Magnitsky sanctions have rightly been placed on Chinese Communist party officials responsible for the horrors of the Uyghur genocide, but there is no such action for their counterparts in Hong Kong.
We must not stand by as Beijing violates the independence of Hong Kong, imposing the oppressive national security law, manipulating the electoral system so that pro-democracy politicians cannot stand, expelling judges and ruthlessly arresting and abusing people who wish to challenge them. After years of the Chinese Government stripping Hong Kong of its basic access to freedom and democracy, we must show Hongkongers that we will not leave them high and dry. A year ago, Hong Kong Watch launched its international lifeboat scheme, and called for the UK to join international partners to provide refuge for those fleeing Hong Kong.
Extending the BNO visa to those wishing to leave Hong Kong was most welcome. Recent figures show that that has been taken up by nearly 35,000 people. However, it does not go far enough. We must make provision for young people from Hong Kong born after 1997, who are just as entitled to UK support and protection as their parents, and for the protesters who have bravely risked safety to challenge Beijing’s authoritarian takeover and now face serious criminal charges. We cannot just pull up the drawbridge.
Growing up in Hong Kong is dangerous not only for those activists; children as young as six years old—my child’s age—are being taught the national security doctrine in school. There are restrictions on what students can learn and discuss in universities; they are growing up with more and more limited access to neutral news sources. I ask the Minister, what will Britain do to fulfil our obligations to those children and young people? Will he join me in saying that we must not just stand with Hong Kong but stand up for Hong Kong? That means action. What action will the Government take?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Tom Randall) for securing such an important debate.
Today marks two years since the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, which were attended by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages and backgrounds. That mighty display of people power symbolised an unwavering belief in civic values, hope and optimism for change, and a refusal to be cowed by the Communist party in Beijing. Two years on, however, every single person in the free world has a duty to feel horrified about the events taking place in Hong Kong, a supposedly free society.
Beijing detests dissent of any description, and in the past few years, it has tightened its stranglehold over free Hong Kong. The final straw was the huge protests against the extradition Bill. Almost immediately, Beijing imposed a security law straight out of the mainland Chinese playbook. What is most disturbing is that that repression was not discreet and creeping as one might have expected; instead, the Chinese are so brazen that they have turned Hong Kong into Shanghai overnight, banning vigils, destroying controversial books and libraries, and making mass arrests. It has sent a chill through society in Hong Kong. The grotesque policing of attempts to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre are testament to that. If that overnight transformation of society can happen in Hong Kong, it can happen anywhere.
There is no doubt in my mind that Britain is solely responsible for Hong Kong’s fate. We have a singular and enduring responsibility toward the people of Hong Kong as a former ruling power and the guarantor of the freedoms secured in the Sino-British joint declaration. Regrettably, we have not covered ourselves in glory in that role. There are no other examples of a leading democracy handing over a free society to an authoritarian regime that clearly could not be trusted. We failed again in the 1990s, when we made a grave and unforgivable mistake by granting Hongkongers a bespoke class of British citizenship in the run-up to the handover, abdicating our responsibilities. We have not done nearly enough to challenge China and make it pay for its actions.
20 of 50 shown
The law includes many broad-brush offences, including
“provoking by unlawful means hatred among Hong Kong residents towards the Central People’s Government or the Government of the Region, which is likely to cause serious consequences.”
Given the extraterritorial nature of the legislation, it might well apply to those of us participating in this debate.
However, this debate is not about history, rules or what might happen to Members of Parliament; it is about people such as Donna Kong, who has lived in Hong Kong her whole life but has decided to take the difficult decision to leave her family behind and move with her husband to Liverpool. She says:
“Nowadays, we have to be careful what we say on the streets.”
Her husband adds:
“Hong Kong is going from a free, international city to just another Chinese city.”
It is about people such as Jimmy Lai, who was jailed in April 2021 for his participation in a peaceful protest in 2019. In reality, it was because he has the temerity to publish a newspaper that criticises the Government. It is about people such as Martin Lee, a barrister and member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong for over 20 years, who is regarded and revered as the father of democracy in Hong Kong. He has been silenced by the national security law. He has stopped his public activism and is no longer granting media interviews. He has also been sentenced for participating in an unlawful assembly, although his sentence was suspended.
The crackdown on human rights in Hong Kong has been all pervasive, and I will give some examples. The legislature has passed an immigration Bill to restrict freedom of movement in and out of Hong Kong. The police chief has floated the idea of a law to target so-called fake news, and he has called for the closure of Jimmy Lai’s Apple Daily, the last pro-democracy publication. Police have censored a website belonging to a Taiwanese church. The Government have attacked the Hong Kong Bar Association and fired 129 civil servants for refusing to sign an oath of allegiance. The local broadcaster, RTHK, has purged its online platform of any shows over a year old but given Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, her own television show, which is shown four times every day. So-called national security education is to be embedded across the curriculum in all secondary schools.
The examples I have given are from April 2021 alone—just one month in the life of Hongkongers—so I welcome the steps taken by the Government in response to China’s actions. The Government have suspended the UK’s extradition treaty with Hong Kong, and extended to Hong Kong the embargo on certain military items already imposed on mainland China. I particularly welcome the new visa route to people from Hong Kong who have British national overseas status and their close family members. It is a generous offer that befits a global Britain that takes this issue seriously, and I am pleased that the Home Office has announced that it has received 34,000 applications for visas in the first two months of operation.
The Government recognise that there is an ongoing breach of Chinese obligations, and I ask whether further measures might be taken. Is there scope to work with allies and partners to ensure a co-ordinated approach? I read recently that Germany will not accept BNO passports as identity documents, and it is important that democracies take a common line on such matters. We continue to have British judges sitting on Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal—a position that perhaps looks increasingly untenable as the current situation continues. As we are able to identify officials in Hong Kong who are guilty of human rights breaches, I ask whether it is time to consider targeted sanctions against them, or at least to assess their effectiveness. Previously, the Minister has kindly indicated that he would be willing to meet me and fellow members of the all-party parliamentary group on Hong Kong to discuss this subject, and I am very willing to take him up on that offer.
There is no dispute resolution clause in the Sino-British joint declaration, but it is a living document, and the United Kingdom is party to it. This country has a duty to protect the rights and freedoms of Hongkongers. Until such time as those freedoms are restored, I expect that the voices from this island will only get louder. I look forward to hearing some of those voices this afternoon.
It is a tactic deployed by the Kremlin, too, and it is spreading across the globe. During the recent onslaught against Gaza by the Israelis, there were mounting reports of another onslaught—the mass reporting by pro-Israeli groups of Palestinian posts from Gaza. This is a new world in which social media is weaponised by the powerful.
What can we do when faced with this bleak descent into untruth? We must champion journalism; we must speak up when we are told that there are “alternative facts”; we must steel the resolve of social media companies when they crumble under the weight of totalitarian pressure and their own avarice; we must speak the names of those who are bullied, arrested and imprisoned; we must honour the memory of those brave young people crushed by the Chinese regime in Tiananmen Square; we must assert the rights of the Uyghurs, and call out their detention and torture; we must champion the right of Tibet to self-determination; and we must never accept Hong Kong’s slide into the grim and oppressive reality faced by so many in mainland China, because we promised its people better.
It is quite interesting to see what they have done in the past month. They have fired civil servants and the rest of the leaders of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement; introduced national security education for children as young as six; amended Hong Kong’s electoral system to bar pro-democracy parties from running; and passed an immigration law that would allow officials to restrict freedom of movement into and out of the city. Arrests, prosecutions and jail sentences have been happening behind closed doors.
I question why British judges are still earning a living in Hong Kong. I believe it is no longer possible for them to argue that they are modifying or ameliorating the situation. All they are doing is giving, in a sense, a bit of succour to a brutal, intolerant and debased regime. The Bar Council here should speak to those who are earning a living in Hong Kong and say, “It is time to draw stumps and come home.” I call on them to do that.
The arrests and prosecutions are staggering: 10,000 people have been arrested and 2,300 charged since the anti-extradition protests started in 2019. Imprisonment for 10 years to life is now the norm, and subversion, secession, collusion with foreign political forces and terrorism are the new laws. They could have just put down terrorism because they are going to find them guilty anyway, so they might as well make it simple; I don’t know why they bothered with the others. However, they have gone through this prolonged process—no doubt they think it somehow persuades people.
I am worried about the way this is going. Children as young as six are being taught to memorise the four crimes under the national security law that I have just mentioned. Schools are to inform police and parents about incidents involving political propaganda, and Hong Kong universities have now fired pro-democracy academics and cut ties with their student unions, following direction from Beijing.
The real question is: what can we do? We have already done a lot, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling has mentioned. The BNO passports are key, although the Chinese are threatening not to recognise them, nor to allow people to leave the country on those BNO passports. I am saddened, but not astonished, by Germany’s response. I do not know if the German Government will one day wake up to the idea that no matter how much they appease the Chinese, it never works. The idea that they depend on Chinese manufacturers for their own requirements and therefore do not want to upset the Government is one of the grave errors taught to us by history. Once started down that road, such a dependency leads further and further, so I hope they will review that.
I want more Magnitsky sanctions on Hong Kong and Chinese officials, and I would extend those further to those involved in the dreadful Uyghur massacres. We must also offer assistance to Hong Kong residents born after 1997. The BNO visa scheme currently does not cover Hongkongers born after 1997, including many young Hong Kong students who are now vulnerable to arrest. I say to my hon. Friend from the Foreign Office, the Minister for Asia, that we should work with like-minded partners to ensure that there are lifeboat schemes for these young Hongkongers.
Ministers should ensure that Hong Kong is on the agenda at the G7—I started with that point and it is vital, so I want to come back to it at the end. I want the Government to review the rules around UK investment in companies that are complicit in human rights abuse and to be much more explicit about the supply chains, so that every single business or investor in the UK or abroad knows what the links are to the main companies all the way down the chain. That has not happened and it must happen.
I believe that this is the single biggest threat facing liberal democracy that currently exists. We are being complacent. We have run to China to do business and, across the western world, we have therefore turned a blind eye to the abuses taking place for too long. The lessons of the 1930s tell us that if we assume that what Governments say is not what they mean, then we are destined to be trapped in the reality of what they do. That is where we are now.
At the G7, which starts tomorrow, I would like my Government to insist that by the end of the meeting we make a clear, unequivocal, united statement that we will no longer put up with the abuses and the nature of the Chinese Government in their attacks on their neighbours and on their own people who live in China. If we do that, then just maybe we will have started the beginning of the change that will secure and rescue our own democracy and our own people’s freedom.
This is a human rights issue that not only affects Hongkongers but affects anyone who dares to speak out or address some of the seditious issues that are ongoing. It is a breach of freedom, including freedom of religion. As we heard from the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson), it is a breach of freedom of expression by journalists. It is a clampdown on the right to worship, whether people are Protestant, Catholic, Jewish or Hindu, or practise any other religion. That freedom of worship is now officially to be oppressed.
It saddens me that I cannot mention in public, or in public prayer or in any of my speeches, my friends in the various mission groups that I have worked with in the past in Hong Kong. Hongkongers who wish to profess the name of their saviour can only do so under fear.
As parliamentarians, we have a duty to speak out. I agree with the hon. Member for Gedling that under the G7 our Government have signed up to article 18 of the universal declaration of human rights. That is a right to the freedom of religious belief and expression and a freedom to worship.
If my Hong Kong friend and pastor, whom I know very well but whom I will not name because that would be unfair because of the effect it could have on his family, were to come here and preach in one of our local churches in Northern Ireland, or even in his own church in Hong Kong, he would do so under the fear of breaking this national security law. That law can be interpreted only by Beijing. This is persecution and torture, and it is via the long arm of the state.
The bamboo curtain on freedom and toleration is falling, and fast. Our nation must speak out about the freedom of religions, journalists and businesses to practise in the way they wish without being tortured or in fear of being tortured in future.
The UK potentially faces a tsunami of millions of Hongkongers coming to Europe. I welcome the decision to grant the Hong Kong British national overseas visa, I must say; I think I cheered out loud when I heard that the Government had shown the courage to do that. However, this potentially puts massive pressure on the UK Government, and it is a pressure that we must be prepared for. The UK has a duty to place each part of this country into a state of preparedness, so that we have sufficient school places, housing locations, jobs and opportunities for these people, who will have a right to be here and whom we should welcome with open arms, because we should be a place of refuge for the persecuted. We need a plan, and we need it now. I hope that the Foreign Office and Home Office will bring that home soon.
Finally, I respectfully ask, urge and implore China to respect that Hong Kong is different from mainland China. I urge our new consul to make a strong case for the Hongkongers. I call for the release of the peaceful protesters who are already in jail and face persecution. I call on the Government in China to fulfil the Sino-British joint declaration on freedom and the rule of law. I challenge HSBC, as others no doubt will in the debate, not to do the dirty work of Beijing, clamping down on people for making a living and having their rights. I will leave those thoughts with hon. Members. I hope the debate goes some way in expressing the anger and contempt for what has happened to these dear people in Hong Kong.
As the co-signatory of the joint declaration and the guarantor of Hong Kong’s autonomy, Her Majesty’s Government must take more determined action. First, there must be a punitive cost for the Hong Kong and Chinese officials who are guilty of dismantling the city’s autonomy and are engaged in cracking down on the pro-democracy movement. All individuals involved in the destruction of democracy in Hong Kong should be subject to co-ordinated Magnitsky sanctions, with the Government working in tandem with our allies.
Secondly, we must do more to support those brave young protesters, many of whom face the prospect of arrest under the draconian law but do not qualify for the Government’s BNO visa scheme. We should make an exception for those born after 1997 who cannot come over as dependants. Thirdly, the Government must stand up for the pro-democracy activists in jail who have British citizenship. The British Government have a duty and responsibility to defend British citizens from Chinese Government oppression. Finally, the Government should not allow the United Kingdom’s chairmanship of this week’s G7 summit to go to waste. Hong Kong must be on the agenda, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) made clear. It is both the right time and the right forum to press for co-ordinated action from the world’s leading democracies. That should include the creation of a UN special rapporteur for Hong Kong.
The crisis in Hong Kong represents a substantial challenge to the idea of global Britain. The people of Hong Kong look to the United Kingdom, as a once-proud Crown colony, to lead the international response. Her Majesty’s Government simply cannot let them down.
Hundreds of thousands of British nationals have been left to their fate, and Asia’s brightest light is going out, with many fearing that Hong Kong will become just another Chinese city. We cannot stand by and watch. This is not only an attack on the people of Hong Kong, but a direct Chinese insult to the UK as a signatory of the joint declaration. In many ways, we have failed Hong Kong, and that failure occurred the moment we trusted China’s empty promises. That failure is evidenced by Hongkongers’ wholesale rejection of the PRC and everything it stands for, and their continued association with Britain. Hongkongers of course have their own proud sense of identity, but they also look to us as a guarantor of their freedoms and as a beacon of democracy.
I welcome the fact that this Government have somewhat corrected that previous folly by providing a pathway to full citizenship for British nationals overseas—that is commendable. I greatly look forward to welcoming Hongkongers to Britain, where they will make a hugely positive contribution to our society, but we could and must do so much more on all fronts.
What can be done? First, we must review British involvement, and the involvement of British nationals, in the Hong Kong police and judiciary, as we must not be complicit in Chinese oppression. Secondly, we must support Hongkongers who do not qualify for the BNO scheme. One of the few things that Portugal did right in Macau was to guarantee full Portuguese citizenship to all Macanese people. We have implemented that for our overseas territories, so we must look at it again for Hong Kong. Thirdly, we must marshal a strong and co-ordinated international response against China to make the Chinese think again. They must realise that this conduct is not acceptable anywhere, whether in the south China sea, Tibet, Xinjiang, the Indian borders or Taiwan.
Fourthly, and most importantly, we must never trust China again. The one country, two-systems model has been proven to be a lie, and we must not be swayed by short-term financial dividends when dealing with China, as we know that by doing so, we will pay dearly in the long term. Lastly, young Hongkongers are the future of the city. We must do everything in our power to support them in their resistance, both here and in Hong Kong. I am certain that if we put those policies into action, freedom will once again reign from Gloucester Road to Victoria Peak, from Stanley to Aberdeen, from the Admiralty to Lamma Island, and from Kowloon to Queensway.