EU Parliament urges sanctions over Hong Kong jailing of activists

Filed 1h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Mourning Song

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Diliff · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

The European Parliament passed a nonbinding resolution Thursday urging sanctions against Chinese and Hong Kong officials over prison sentences of up to seven years given to activists Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, Chow Hang-tung, 41, and Albert Ho, 74, for organizing Tiananmen Square vigils. The sentences were issued under Beijing's 2020 national security law for Hong Kong.

Lawmakers called on the European Commission to apply the bloc's human rights sanctions regime against responsible officials and to work toward suspending Hong Kong's separate WTO status. Hong Kong and Macau were once the only places on Chinese soil where public mourning for the 1989 crackdown was allowed, but such commemorations have since been effectively banned.

Slovak lawmaker Miriam Lexmann told Parliament Hong Kong has become a tool of Beijing's foreign policy and a gateway for circumventing EU sanctions on Russia.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A nonbinding resolution is Parliament's way of saying it's upset without having to do the harder work of actually doing anything. Beijing has weathered worse than a strongly worded vote, and the WTO suspension talk will likely sit in a drawer next to a dozen similar suggestions. Still, somebody ought to say out loud what happened to three people for lighting candles, even if saying so changes nothing on the ground.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Mourning Song · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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