6 2GM Tuesday July 21 2020 | the times
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Kong authorities against activists
during mass demonstrations. Last sum-
mer Jeremy Hunt, as foreign secretary,
announced the suspension of future
licences for tear gas and other crowd
control equipment to Hong Kong, after
accusations of police brutality during
demonstrations. It appeared that
existing export licences, including open
licences that only expired this year, had
remained in place, however.
Britain has licensed £9.5 million of
arms to Hong Kong since 2014, includ-
ing “crowd control” ammunition, ac-
cording to the Campaign Against theHong Kong students in Britain will stay
silent during political discussions about
China on university campuses as fears
rise of retribution from Beijing.
Speaking anonymously to The Times,
students at Oxford, Sheffield, Warwick,
Loughborough and Nottingham said it
was too dangerous to openly campaign
for democratic rights in the territory or
even voice opinions in classrooms.
China imposed a law limiting the
freedoms of residents of Hong Kong
last month, breaching the 1997 hand-
over agreement that afforded them
rights not enjoyed by people in
mainland China.
The law gives Beijing the power to
extradite dissidents in the former Brit-
ish colony to the mainland. Under the
legislation pro-democracy demonstra-
tors or protesters demanding inde-
pendence can be jailed for treason.
Police can also search premises without
a court order. The law also applies to
those living outside China.
Many Hong Kong students studying
Students silent in fear of retribution
in Britain fear that Chinese classmates
will report them to the embassy in
London if they argue in favour of the
territory’s independence from the
mainland.
The students, aged between 19 and
22, said that their activism would be
driven underground and online to pro-
tect their identities and the safety of
their friends and families back home.
They said that they would be forced
to rely on western students to front
their protests and become the faces of
the movement. It will mark an end to
the often lively and occasionally violent
exchanges between Hong Kong and
mainland Chinese students, which
have coloured campus life in Britain for
years.
Some students said that they would
not participate in student union votes
or sign petitions because using their re-
al names would pose too great a risk.
One student at Warwick argued that
the law “strips us of all sense of security
to speak without fear of being arrested
or abused, and have the personal safety
of our friends and families compro-mised”. The student added: “Such fear
does not stop even if we are out of China
due to the toxic culture and practice of
the overseas Chinese community."
A Sheffield student said: "Many of us
have deleted [social media] posts and
self-censored ourselves because there
is a causal relationship between what
we say and our personal safety.”
A third said: “Even if such a law has
not been passed, people like us face
doxxing [maliciously searching for
information about a person online],
intimidation from opponents. The
introduction of the national security
law definitely left a huge impact [on]
our decision-making in terms of the
methods and scale of campaigning
when we are back in the campus.
"Everyone keeps mentioning that the
UK is a free country that allows
freedom of speech. However, the
university keeps letting us down when
they try to classify the arguments
between HK people and China
students like personal arguments.
“The attitude of the UK university
itself is a problem.”Charlie Parker
Quentin Letts
Cool croupier plays
a dangerous game
D
ominic Raab does
nonchalant aggression
well. His black-belt-judo
physique helps, as does
that raised vein on the
side of his head. It suggests a throb
of fury below the surface. If you
saw it on a hijacker, you might
negotiate rather than call his bluff.
Mr Raab came to the Commons
to discuss the latest moves againstChina. A few months ago we were
going to be Beijing’s eager handmaid.
Now we are so astonished by the
Chinese government’s behaviour
that, as Mr Raab disclosed, we were
ripping up our extradition treaty
with Hong Kong “immediately and
indefinitely”. A terse expression. It
could have been accompanied by a
Handel chorus singing “forever, and
ever, and ever”, yet the foreign
secretary spoke without theatricality.
There was just that Raab-ish
indifference, so low-key it could be
mistaken for weariness. There is
something of the roulette-table
croupier about Mr Raab. A gambler
(Mr X, or even Mr Xi) has placed aPolitical Sketch
Britain has imposed an arms embargo
on Hong Kong that bans the export of
equipment that could be used for
“internal repression”.
Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary,
also confirmed that Britain’s extradi-
tion treaty with the territory was “im-
mediately and indefinitely” suspended.
Mr Raab told MPs yesterday that the
measures were a “necessary and pro-
portionate response” to a national
security law imposed by China on
Hong Kong that effectively outlaws
dissent. It remains unclear how Beijing
will enforce the legislation but Mr Raab
warned: “The UK is watching and the
whole world is watching.”
The statement came as Mike Pom-
peo, the US secretary of state, was fly-
ing to London to meet the prime minis-
ter. The pair are expected to discuss
security concerns over Huawei, Hong
Kong and the South China Sea.
Mr Raab told the Commons: “Given
the role China has now assumed for the
internal security of Hong Kong and the
authority it’s exerting over law enforce-
ment, the UK will extend to Hong Kong
the arms embargo that we’ve applied to
mainland China since 1989.”
The export of “lethal weapons, their
components and ammunition” are
banned, as well as equipment that could
be used to repress dissent among the
local population, including shackles,
intercept technology, firearms and
smoke grenades.
In 2014 pro-democracy protesters in
Hong Kong alleged that tear gas gre-
nades used against them had been
made in Britain. Questions were also
raised last year about whether British-
made products were used by the Hong
Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of
state, flew in to Britain yesterday
News China
Raab bans arms sales to deny
Lucy Fisher Defence Editor
George Grylls
Arms Trade, a British-based organisa-
tion. This included £2.5 million of licen-
ces for small arms. The government
also approved 13 open licences, which
allow an unlimited transfer of items
during a period. As recently as last year
the UK College of Policing provided
training for forces in Hong Kong.
Mr Raab said that China’s new
national security law in Hong Kong was
a “clear and serious violation” of the
UK-China Joint Declaration that
underpinned the return of the territory
in 1997 and “a violation of China’s freely
assumed international obligations”.
This month the government outlined
a bespoke immigration route for British
National (Overseas) passport holders
in Hong Kong to live in the UK for five
years and seek a path to citizenship.
About 200,000 people are expected to
take up the offer by 2025, according to
internal Foreign Office estimates.
Mr Raab also said that the govern-
ment had “grave concerns” about the
“gross human rights abuses” against
Uighur Muslims that are taking place in
Xinjiang, in northwest China. Tough
rhetoric on standing up to China was
interwoven with warmer sentiments
about the nation’s economic record and
the need for London and Beijing to
work together.
Stressing that Britain strove for a pos-
itive relationship, Mr Raab acknowl-
edged China’s “remarkable success in
raising millions of its own people out of
poverty” and paid tributes to its science,
technology and renewables sectors.
There was scope for co-operation on
trade and climate change, he said.
Earlier the prime minister had
promised to strike a balance in his ap-
proach to China, resisting pressure
from hawks to adopt a hardline policy.
“I’m not going to be pushed into a
position of becoming a knee-jerk
Sinophobe on every issue, somebody
who is automatically anti-China,” he
said. “But we do have serious concerns.”
The Chinese ambassador to London
criticised Britain’s approach. In a BBC
interview on Sunday Liu Xiaoming
accused Mr Johnson’s administration
of “dancing to the tune” of the US and
said that the West was trying to foment
a “new cold war” with China. He also
rejected allegations of widespread
abuses against Uighurs, accusing “so-
called western intelligence” of making
false allegations against Beijing.
Thunderer, page 28
Anti-China war games, page 32 Police officers detaining a protester at Hong Kong Polytechnic University lastBehind the story
B
ritain is a major
exporter of arms to
Hong Kong. Since 2014
British companies have
sold at least £9.5 million
worth of weapons to the former
colony, according to the
Campaign Against Arms Trade
(George Grylls writes).
That year Britain said that it
would review export licences to
the territory after Hong Kong
police used tear gas to break up
demonstrators from the
Umbrella Movement, but a year
later exports began again. It is
thought that British-made tear
gas was used by Hong Kong
police last year to suppress
democracy protesters after a
photo of a gas canister was linked
to a Hampshire-based company.
The UK College of Policing is
known to have offered training
courses to Hong Kong police.
Reacting to the protests last
year, Jeremy Hunt, who was
foreign secretary at the time, told
the Commons that Britain would
not issue export licences for
crowd control weapons unless it
was satisfied that human rights
concerns had been addressed.
In recent weeks other Five
Eyes allies, including the US and
Canada, have implemented
export bans on arms sales.
Trade in arms has slowed in
recent years. According to the
South China Morning Post, the
UK sold £1.4 billion of snipers,
machine guns and other weapons
to Hong Kong from 2008 to 2014.