The government is offering safe haven to millions of people in Hong Kong, showing that the UK is leading the world in democracy
It is no surprise that China has chosen the middle of a global pandemic to undertake the wholesale hijack of Hong Kong. Taking advantage of a crisis and a distracted world in order to fulfil aggressive, expansionist objectives is a classic element of the totalitarian playbook.
Beijing has spent years testing the water; the supposed international standard bearers of liberty and democracy turned out to be paper tigers on each of the previous occasions when Hong Kong’s freedom was infringed. Other, even more egregious, human rights abuses by China – such as the wholesale oppression of the country’s Uighur Muslims – were also allowed to pass almost unremarked.
The world’s democracies should have realised long ago that tyrannies are dedicated opportunists. If you give an inch, then regimes like China’s will take a mile – literally, in the case of numerous territory grabs. Then they will take some more. That lesson is forgotten at least as often as it is painfully relearned.
More should have been done, far sooner, to try to prevent the crushing of Hong Kong. It is an everlasting shame that a flourishing society, with so many achievements and so much potential, could simply be surrendered to the mercies of such a regime. The city’s young people were left using umbrellas to fight for their liberty and their lives, against the rubber bullets and steely greed of a totalitarian bully.
The craven failure of the free world even to criticise Beijing’s numerous crimes in recent years was interpreted as tacit permission to continue along the same path. If we weren’t going to push back when times were relatively good, then China understandably bet that we won’t do so if it accelerated its plan while the world wrestled with Covid-19.
The turning of world opinion against a regime that facilitated the spread of the virus by seeking to cover up the outbreak has likely also accelerated the urge to seize final control of Hong Kong – grab what you can, when you can.So while it is depressing to see this happen, is it not surprising.
What does seem to have surprised many people, however, is the decision of the UK to make a dramatic offer of safe refuge to millions of Hongkongers.
The Foreign Office extended the rights of an estimated 350,000 holders of British National (Overseas) [BNO] passports to include 12-month renewable UK visas, and a path to British citizenship, which is welcome. Even better, they made clear those rights apply to all those eligible for a BNO passport – a far wider pool of up to three million people.
It’s a snub to China, which claims a supposedly sole and inviolable right to control every aspect of Hongkongers’ lives, with no contest or rebuke from any other state. It’s also a justified signal that we won’t be deterred by farcical denunciations about the supposed imperialism of protecting people’s rights – particularly when they’re issued by a 21st Century imperialist power which is itself on the rampage.
Just as importantly, it’s a lifeline to people in Hong Kong who feel they need to leave their home in order to stay safe. Nobody should have to make such a decision, but we are right to help to offer refuge to those who do. Hopefully other democratic countries will do so, too. There’s a strong moral and principled logic for the decision. So why, then, does it surprise some observers?
The answer lies in a misunderstanding of the UK and the Conservative Party. If you believed all the rhetoric about Brexit “cutting us off from the world” and “Fortress Britain” supposedly “pulling up the drawbridge”, then of course you’ll be surprised to see a post-Brexit UK leading the world in welcoming people from Hong Kong who need safe harbour. Because that rhetoric was mere propaganda all along.
Listen again to those Brexiteers who talked of a reassertion of democratic self-determination, however, and this policy is completely consistent. A UK that found the EU an excessive infringement on its rights understandably opposes a far more gross assault on the rights of Hong Kong by China.
A UK that sought to speak for itself on the world stage is now doing so. Eighty-five per cent of Conservative Party members agree with the policy. (By contrast, it must be said, the EU has gone a bit quiet about its much-vaunted commitment to fundamental values.)
It’s no coincidence that two of the Brexiteers who made the case for democratic self-determination are at the very heart of this decision. Priti Patel and Dominic Raab, as Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary, have delivered a policy that defies their opponents’ crude caricatures of their politics.
Perhaps their critics forget that both Patel and Raab are the children of people who sought refuge in this country and were granted it. They know first-hand that the right decision in Westminster can make the difference between freedom and oppression, life and death.
The UK’s history on such decisions over the years has, frankly, been patchy; on Hong Kong, at least, this Government has got it right.
