UK moves to reinstate extradition deal with Hong Kong despite concerns

The United Kingdom authorities is moving to reinstate extradition practice with Hong Kong that was suspended 5 years agone owed to concerns astir the city’s Chinese nationalist information laws.

The Home Office applied to Parliament to marque the changes connected July 17, followed by a missive to Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp the adjacent day.

“It is successful our nationalist involvement to person effectual extradition relationships to forestall criminals from evading justness and the UK becoming a haven for criminals,” the July 18 missive from Security Minister Dan Jarvis said.

The Home Office besides plans to reconstruct an extradition model with Chile and Zimbabwe, according to the letter, which was shared connected X by Conservative MP Alicia Kearns.

Cases for Hong Kong and Zimbabwe would some beryllium considered connected a “case-by-case basis,” Jarvis said.

Hong Kong, a erstwhile British colony, is simply a peculiar sticking constituent for the UK owed to their humanities narration and the crisp diminution successful governmental freedoms successful Hong Kong since China imposed arguable nationalist information authorities successful 2020.

In 2024, legislators successful Hong Kong approved a caller nationalist information instrumentality ­- referred to arsenic Article 23 – that gave the authorities caller powers to ace down connected each forms of dissent connected the grounds of alleged treason, espionage, sedition and outer interference successful Hong Kong’s interior affairs.

At the time, Hong Kong’s authorities said Article 23 was needed to forestall a recurrence of the protests of 2019, and that its provisions would lone impact “an highly tiny minority” of disloyal residents.

The UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany and the United States each suspended their extradition agreements successful 2020 with the Chinese metropolis owed to concerns astir however the laws would beryllium used.

“In my view, reinstating extradition with Hong Kong is morally indefensible. The Chinese Communist Party has turned Hong Kong into a surveillance authorities wherever state of expression, regularisation of law, and basal civilian liberties are systematically dismantled,” Kearns wrote connected X.

“This determination risks legitimizing a authorities that imprisons critics, silences ideology activists, and uses extradition arsenic a instrumentality of persecution,” she said.

Here is the missive from the Home Office.

In my view, reinstating extradition with Hong Kong is morally indefensible.

The Chinese Communist Party has turned Hong Kong into a surveillance authorities wherever state of expression, regularisation of law, and basal civilian liberties are… pic.twitter.com/6gb923QXKb

— Alicia Kearns MP (@aliciakearns) July 24, 2025

Ronny Tong, a Hong Kong barrister and subordinate of the city’s enforcement council, told Al Jazeera that concerns astir a imaginable extradition woody were overblown.

“Extradition is successful narration to non-political transgression cases, truthful immoderate fearfulness that it’d beryllium utilized to transportation persons with governmental crimes, eg, nationalist information cases, is wholly unfounded and lone shows ignorance of the procedure,” helium said. “Furthermore, it is up to judges of the transferring authorities to guarantee the process volition not beryllium abused.”

He said the metropolis was “more than acceptable to restart the arrangement, arsenic we person afloat assurance our judges are wholly autarkic and of highest integrity”.

Hong Kong’s 2020 nationalist information instrumentality criminalised secession, subversion, coercion and overseas interference, and was supplemented successful 2024 to see treason, sedition, theft of authorities secrets, espionage, sabotage, and outer interference.

Hong Kong’s authorities has said the laws are indispensable to support the metropolis from governmental sabotage and overseas influence, pursuing months of pro-democracy demonstrations successful 2019.

Security Minister Chris Tang said successful June that 326 radical person been arrested nether Hong Kong’s nationalist information laws since 2020.

The authorities has besides utilized planetary bounties to grow its scope to Hong Kong activists abroad, oregon cancelled their passports portion they were overseas.

The moves person been seen arsenic mostly symbolic, but besides chilling for a metropolis that was erstwhile considered the freest spot successful Asia.

On Friday, Hong Kong issued a caller database of bounties for 19 activists progressive with a pro-Hong Kong ideology NGO successful Canada.

Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty successful 1997 arsenic a “special administrative region” and was promised peculiar rights and freedoms until 2047, nether the Sino-British Joint Declaration.