The Hong Kong government expressed its “maximum anger” over the US decision to sanction six city officials and China, and called the measure “insane, shameless and despicable.”
The United States is trying to “intervene” in the internal affairs of China and Hong Kong and “obstruct” its efforts to safeguard national security, the city government said in a statement. Saturday statement. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Friday that the U.S. would sanction officials as part of President Donald Trump’s executive order on Hong Kong normalization.
This measure is the latest step the White House has taken to punish China after Beijing last year imposed national security laws on Hong Kong. The law has questioned whether the former colony can still have the “high degree of autonomy” promised before the British returned it to China in 1997. The United States has begun revoking the “special status” that had enjoyed the city and has also sanctioned officials, including chief executive Carrie Lam.
“U.S. acts show double standards and hypocrisy, let alone flagrantly violating international laws and basic rules governing international relations,” the Hong Kong government said in the statement. The excuse the U.S. uses to sanction officials was “lame” and “hard to keep up Until challenge, “he added.
A spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry in Hong Kong condemned the sanctions in one Saturday’s statement that some Western politicians “present a false image” and embellish those suspected of violating the National Security Act as “pro-democracy politicians and activists.”
(Updates with comments from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the last paragraph)