US Report on Hong Kong seriously flawed

The US State Department’s so called 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, which severely criticizes Hong Kong for its national security laws and detention of Jimmy Lai is seriously flawed.

In fact, it is hardly worth the paper it’s written on. But it did draw criticism from the Hong Kong SAR Government, and others, noting that “the US is once again overriding the rule of law with politics and politicising human rights issues. Such attempt to interfere in Hong Kong's law-based governance and undermine the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong is doomed to fail."

Specifically, the government responded to criticism of the Correctional Services Department and its treatment of Jimmy Lai currently facing treason-associated charges. The rights of [prisoners] are safeguarded through a system of regular visits by independent visitors, namely Justices of the Peace (JPs), who are vested with the statutory duties to inspect the prisons once or twice every month..."

The Chinese foreign ministry office in Hong Kong also expressed its “firm opposition” to the US report.

It said that the US was “rehashing” cases involving “anti-China, destabilising forces in Hong Kong” and openly supporting them. It urged the US to stop interfering in Hong Kong’s affairs and to respect China’s sovereignty and the city’s rule of law.

“This fully exposes the US’s politicisation and instrumentalisation of human rights issues, as well as its sinister attempt to use Hong Kong to contain China’s development — an act that is despicable,” the statement read.

The report is very different from last year’s document, issued under the Democratic administration of Joe Biden. Compared to previous editions, sections in respect for gay rights and analyses of gender-based violence have disappeared.

Under the current President Trump administration, for example, the report on Israel is much shorter than its 2023 Biden version, which ran for 103 pages. The new Trump report is just nine pages long.

There is no reference to the thousands of Palestinian deaths in Gaza, which the Hamas-run Ministry of Health estimates at over 61,000. There is also no mention of the desperate humanitarian situation or Israel’s restrictions on food supplies. The section on war crimes and genocide concludes with two lines: “Terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah continue to engage in the indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians in violation of the law of armed conflict.” That’s it!

The reports started in the late ‘70s as a legal requirement of the US Congress which passed laws in 1961 requiring the State Department to report on human rights abroad as part of the Foreign Assistant Act. So, effectively the US is compelled to issue the report each year.

China, fed up with the US’s acrimonious ‘holier than thou attitude’ towards the world, hit back at the State Department’s country reports and produced its own Human Rights Record of the United States in 1998. Its latest report on 2023, published last year, targets gun violence in the US when 43,000 were killed, an average of 117 deaths per day. And police brutally persist with 1247 deaths attributed to police violence. It also noted that the US accounts for 25 per cent of the world’s prison population even though it has less than 5 per cent of the global population, earning the title of a “carceral state.”

Even some US politicians draw on the hypocrisy of the report. A new report by Democrat senator Jon Ossoff has catalogued hundreds of alleged human rights abuses in US immigration detention centres, including physical and sexual abuse, mistreatment of pregnant women, and inadequate medical care. The report said that it had received or identified 510 “credible reports” of human rights abuse against individuals held in immigration detention centres since 20 January 2025. These included reports of overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions, inadequate food and water, exposure to extreme temperatures, denial of access to attorneys, and family separations.

Another government that is a close ally of the Trump administration, El Salvador, has seen its ratings greatly improved, and the report’s dedicated space has been significantly reduced: comments take up 75 per cent less than in previous editions. Mentions of the country’s prison conditions, which Amnesty International had described as “inhumane,” and allegations of arbitrary arrests have disappeared.

Brazil, on the other hand, whose relationship with Washington has plummeted and on which the Trump administration has imposed new tariffs due to the house arrest of former president Jair Bolsonaro — a former international ally of Trump — is vilified in the report. The State Department attacks the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, arguing that the restrictions it imposes on access to internet content disproportionately harm the far-right leader’s supporters.

Mark Pinkstone

** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **

The British government’s decision to amend its extradition treaty with Hong Kong has been greeted with shock and confusion among the many activists hiding in the UK to escape prosecution in Hong Kong.

Whitehall announced last week that it was going to scrap Hong Kong off its extradition list and in future handle all extradition applications on a case-by-case basis. The Home Office said it was amending legislation to enable co-operation between the UK and Hong Kong on matters of extradition. The UK signed an extradition treaty with Hong Kong in 1997, but it was suspended in 2020 after mass demonstrations forced the Hong Kong SAR Government to withdraw a bill that would allow extradition between Hong Kong and Taiwan, Macau and the Chinese mainland.

There was an immediate reaction to the Home Office announcement from Hong Kong activists and politicians in the UK, calling the proposal a betrayal. They could see their safe haven eroding away and even abandonment by their saviours. The so-called pro-democracy group, Hong Kong Watch said the plan was a “reckless move which will endanger many pro-democracy activists now living in the UK.”

The UK’s Home Office minister Dan Jarvis reckons some 160,000 Hong Kongers have emigrated to the UK since 2021. However, it is believed that many are having assimilation problems, finding work at levels they are accustomed to and higher taxation.

Jarvis defends the new proposed legislation saying it is merely a necessary legal step to allow the “severing of ties.” He wrote to parliamentarians earlier mentioning that even if there were strong reasons for the extradition of fugitives to Hong Kong, the current regulations would not allow this to be done, and it was necessary to make amendments to allow the UK side to cooperate with these non-treaty partners on a case-by-case basis.

The shadow minister for national security Alicia Kearns, in a letter riddled with untruths and false information to Jarvis, claimed that “many Hongkongers arrested for protest were given false violent convictions as a method of opposing dissent …” and that “protections should be put in place to identify and reject false charges made against the activists”.

Kearns should know better. The charges against the renegade activists are real and of a criminal nature. They are fleeing prosecution and trial by a common law court similar to the UK and recognized as one of the fairest in the world. Kearns is effectively harbouring criminals fleeing justice.

Since the handover in 1997 Hong Kong has signed up extradition treaties with 17 countries of which eight, including Australia, UK, US and New Zealand, suspended the agreement after Hong Kong introduced its new national security laws.

Missing from that round of agreements were Taiwan, Macau and the Chinese mainland.

There was no hurry until early 2018 when 19-year-old Hong Kong resident Chan Tong-kai murdered his pregnant girlfriend in Taiwan, then returned to Hong Kong where he admitted to police that he had killed his girlfriend. But the police were unable to charge him for murder or extradite him to Taiwan because no agreement was in place at the time. Hong Kong Legislators felt the loophole had to be fixed and introduced the Extradition 2019 bill.

Anti-China propogandists seized the opportunity and quickly spread rumours that anyone committing a crime in Hong Kong could be tried in China. Poppycock! Let logic prevail. First, the two places have different legal systems: Hong Kong enjoys the Common Law system practiced in all British commonwealth countries and the US while China practices the civil law system practiced in the rest of the world. [In civil law jurisdictions, courts base their decisions on the interpretation and application of statutes and codes. Judges have a more limited role in shaping the law compared to their counterparts in common law jurisdictions. In common law jurisdictions, judges play a vital role in shaping the law through their interpretation of legal precedents.] The bill was to facilitate the extradition of a person who commits a crime and flees to another country to be returned to the country where the offence took place to stand trial. But the seeds of doubt had been sown, and masses of demonstrators took to the streets demanding that the proposal be dropped. They won.

At the time the bill was introduced, it was estimated there were some 300 fugitives from the mainland living in Hong Kong without fear of being returned to the mainland for trial.

In the UK there can be no doubt that the subject will be widely debated in the Commons and the House of Lords where politicians have already picked sides, thanks to the lobbying efforts by anti-Hong Kong/China groups.