Hong Kong’s decision to effectively blacklist a senior Financial Times journalist required an “urgent explanation,” the U. K. said Saturday. Other governmen
HONG KONG – Hong Kong’s decision to effectively blacklist a senior Financial Times journalist required an “urgent explanation,” the U. K. said Saturday. Other governments also sounded the alarm over eroding freedoms in the former British colony.
Victor Mallet, the FT’s Asia news editor and a British national, earned the ire of authorities for hosting a speech by Andy Chan, the leader of a tiny pro-independence political party.
Chan attacked China as an empire trying to “annex” and “destroy” Hong Kong in a strident speech at the city’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC), where Mallet serves as vice president.
China’s foreign ministry had asked the club to pull the talk, but the FCC refused, arguing that all sides of a debate should be heard.
Rival protesters picketed the lunchtime event and the city’s former leader Leung Chun-ying called for the club to be evicted from its government-owned premises.
The FT said Friday that immigration authorities in Hong Kong had declined to renew Mallet’s visa, a decision rights groups and media organizations said was unprecedented.
“We have asked the Hong Kong government for an urgent explanation,” the U. K.’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office said in a statement.
“Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy and its press freedoms are central to its way of life, and must be fully respected.
