Olivia Enos, a senior policy analyst in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation, spoke with the Daily Caller’s Samantha Renck about China’s security law, what it means for Hong Kong and more.
On Tuesday, China passed a new security law “to further tighten its control over Hong Kong amid rising tensions with the United States.”
“This is pretty remarkable, as you mentioned,” Enos said. “It was a possibility it was going to happen — now it’s a reality. We’re looking at basically the one country, two systems framework that has governed Hong Kong since the handover from the British to China in 1997 basically crumbling before our very eyes.”
Enos expressed concern over the security law because it “essentially makes very vague terms illegal. They make sedition illegal, talk of secession illegal, so-called foreign collusion and then terrorism illegal. But they don’t mean those words in the way that we mean them.” (RELATED: Man Arrested For Holding Hong Kong Independence Flag During Demonstration Against New Chinese Law)
“All of the pro-democracy protests that we saw last year are not going to be able to continue,” Enos said. “I think that’s being made evident by the fact that [on Tuesday], literally the first day that the national security law was in effect over 300 protesters were arrested, nine of which are believed to be charged under the national security law specifically.”
Enos also discussed the dangers the new laws pose to political freedoms in Hong Kong for activists like Joshua Wong.
“The national security law poses a really serious threat to political freedoms. It might not pose as severe a threat to economic freedoms in Hong Kong and I think that we are going to continue to see this steady erosion, and perhaps expedited by the national security law that’s passed, but it really is going to continue to be an overtime development.”
Enos also discussed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s actions regarding Hong Kong, the role of the United States and more.
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