House of Commons emergency debate will take place to discuss China’s ban on proposed foreign affairs committee trip
David Cameron was critical of Beijing's decision with regard to the foreign affairs committee. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters
Julian Borger and Richard Norton-Taylor
Tuesday 2 December 2014 07.17 AEST
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David Cameron has criticised China’s refusal to allow a UK parliamentary delegation to visit Hong Kong as a mistake that would only heighten international concerns about the political crisis in the former British colony.
The prime minister stepped into the row, asthe Hong Kong police drove pro-democracy protesters out of large areas of the city centre, triggering some of the most violent clashes of the two months of demonstrations.
Hugo Swire, the foreign office minister with responsibility for China affairs, met a senior Chinese Communist party official, Guo Yezhou, in London on Monday in an effort to persuade Beijing to grant visas to members of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee who were planning to visit Hong Kong later this month. The proposed visit was part of an inquiry into the colony’s relations with the UK 30 years after the joint declaration that led to the handover to China in 1997.
Swire emphasised that the foreign affairs committee was independent from government, and that the proposed visit did not therefore amount to the UK government meddling in China’s internal affairs. The foreign secretary Philip Hammond also raised the issue with his counterpart Wang Yi, at the margins of nuclear talks in Vienna last week.
The spat over the Hong Kong visit has come at a time when both sides have been seeking to repair ties which have been strained since Cameron met the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader.
The prime minister’s spokesman was sharply critical yesterday of Beijing’s decision.
“His [Cameron’s] view is that the decision with regard to the foreign affairs committee is a mistaken one,” the spokesman said. “It’s counter-productive because it only serves to amplify concerns about the situation in Hong Kong, rather than diminishing concerns.”
Chinese officials have presented the planned visit as post-colonial interference, pointing out that Britain handed over Hong Kong in 1997. Richard Ottoway, the committee chairman, said the deputy Chinese ambassador in London told him: “You’re not still a colonial power.”
Ottaway told the AFP press agency: “I don’t think for a moment that we think we’re still a colonial power ... we’ve got every right to ascertain whether China is complying with its undertakings.”
Ottaway said that the committee will proceed with its inquiry. “We are not going to be pressured by the Chinese government into abandoning our inquiry, nor are we going to cancel plans to hear from people in Hong Kong,” he said. “The approach taken by China has been very revealing, and we shall be looking carefully at how the Foreign Office responds.”
There will be an emergency debate on Tuesday afternoon in the House of Commons to discuss the Chinese ban, after a request from Ottaway.
Under a 1984 joint declaration, Hong Kong was supposed to retain wide-ranging freedoms and autonomy under a “one country, two systems” formula. But the wave of demonstrations was triggered by Beijing’s attempts to control nominations for 2017 presidential elections.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying had previously said that Beijing had every right to decide who it let into the territory, calling the British committee’s determination to visit “an overt confrontation”.
The row over the visit comes as the British government says it will conduct an urgent inquiry into the use of British teargas by the Hong Kong police in light of renewed and violent clashes in the former UK colony.
British teargas was used by Hong Kong police against demonstrators on 28 September, ministers have confirmed.
Questioned by MPs on Monday about the potential further use of British teargas, Vince Cable said he would “urgently seek advice”. It has emerged that Hammond told Cable the use of teargas by the Hong Kong police was “an uncharacteristic response at an early stage of the protests, the scale of which caught the police by surprise”.
Reports from Hong Kong said that pepper spray, rather than teargas, was being used against the demonstrators, Hammond said.
However, he told the MPs it would be “disingenuous” to deny that British teargas was supplied for what he called “public order policy”. He made a distinction between that aim and “internal repression”.
The coalition government has approved seven licences to Hong Kong for teargas, the most recent one in January. Chemring, based in Romsey, Hampshire, which has sold the crowd-control weapon to the former British colony for several years under export licences approved by the government, told the Guardian in September it would review its sales policy.
Andrew Smith of the Campaign Against Arms Trade said on Monday: “We know that UK-produced teargas has been used against democracy protesters in Hong Kong, just as UK weapons are likely to have been used against the people of Gaza.”
He added: “These licences should certainly be cancelled, but even this would not address the fundamental problem ... The point is that these licences should never have been allowed in the first place.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/01/david-cameron-uk-foreign-affairs-committee-hong-kong-house-of-commons-china
