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CFHK Foundation Heads to Ottawa to Meet Canadian Parliamentarians and Government Officials

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The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation travelled to Ottawa this week to meet with Senators and MPs about the ongoing crackdown in Hong Kong and win their support for the campaign to free Hong Kong’s political prisoners. Concern is growing across Canada about the CCP’s impact on Canadians’ lives, and we look forward to further substantive work in Ottawa.

 


Shannon Van Sant, Mark Sabah, and Jonathan Stivers at the Senate in Ottawa, Canada

 

Frances Hui, Policy and Advocacy Coordinator of the CFHK Foundation, testified before Oklahoma’s House of Representatives regarding an interim study on transnational repression by the Chinese Communist Party targeting Hong Kong activists and the Oklahoma Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and Foreign Adversary Divestment Act (FADA).


In her testimony, Hui shared her experiences as a Hong Kong political dissident and college student in the U.S., where she received death threats while organising rallies in support of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. Hui spoke of the importance of Oklahoma passing a state FARA to combat transnational repression. A video of the hearing and Hui’s testimony can be watched here.

 

Frances Hui testifying in Oklahoma legislature on CCP’s transnational repression.


Hong Kong


Hong Kong denied entry to about 23,000 people in the first nine months of the year, with 85 percent determined to have “suspicious aims” for entering the city according to Benson Kwok, Hong Kong’s Director of Immigration. He said Hong Kong had compiled a “watch list” of unwelcome individuals who were considered a risk to either national security or the city’s social order.

 

People in Hong Kong have reported they can no longer access a prominent diaspora media outlet, “Flow HK.” The website was blocked following a request from the Hong Kong police to a U.S. web-hosting company to take the Flow HK website down. Although the U.S. company did not comply, Flow HK has now become inaccessible for most internet users with Hong Kong IP addresses.


U.S. - Hong Kong


The Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C. released a statement attacking Jimmy Lai’s international legal team and its efforts to secure his immediate release from prison in Hong Kong. Mark Clifford, President of CFHK Foundation issued a statement in response, slamming the embassy’s action, calling it a “breach of the ‘one country two systems’ principle as well as the rubbishing of the presumption of innocence that defendants enjoy. The embassy’s wolf-warrior attack constitutes a violation of human rights as well as diplomatic protocol.”

  

 “If the Chinese Government’s apparatchiks in Washington think they are going to bully and lie Americans into believing that Jimmy Lai, a man so dedicated to human rights, freedom, and peaceful protest that he now sits in solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison, is a criminal, they are so sorely out of touch that they should turn in their diplomatic credentials,” Clifford added.


UK - Hong Kong


The Independent reports that at least six British citizens have been unjustly detained for years without a fair trial in countries with close trading links to the UK, including Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist and founder of Apple Daily. Hong Kong authorities have kept Lai in solitary confinement for almost four years.

 

Mark Sabah, Director of the CFHK Foundation, told The Independent that the British Foreign Office is “giving cover to authoritarian states to do whatever they like,” adding, “These authoritarian states now know full well that in order to get the British government to drop the case, they only need to dangle some sort of trade investment.”

 

The CFHK Foundation attended the launch of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on arbitrary detention and hostage affairs. Lai’s son, Sebastien, and civil liberties expert and lead counsel Caoilfhionn Gallagher, spoke about Lai’s case and urged the UK government to secure his release.


Australia - Hong Kong


Sebastien Lai spoke with SBS News about his father’s pro-democracy activism and treatment in prison. “They’re drawing out his trial. At almost 77, he is being kept in a cell in solitary confinement for more than 1,300 days; he doesn’t get any natural light,” Sebastien said, “Hong Kong is like Australia. It could be up to 30-40 degrees Celsius. He’s baking in there some days. They are slowly but surely killing him.”

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