‘Freedom Is Being Crushed’: Lawmakers Denounce Hong Kong’s New National Security Law

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other lawmakers recently condemned draconian legislation in Hong Kong enacted with the support of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Safeguarding National Security Bill, Article 23, took effect on March 23. It was proposed by the CCP-controlled Hong Kong Legislative Council in 2003, but its implementation was hamstrung at that time by local protests and international public outcry. Just over 20 years later, the CCP has rammed the policy through the Hong Kong legislature with almost no local opposition, a follow-up to its draconian national security law, implemented in 2020. “It’s … a total betrayal,” Ms. Pelosi said at a press conference at the Capitol on March 22, referring to the CCP’s reneging on its 1997 “one country two systems” agreement to extend greater autonomy to Hong Kong. She described the new law as an “alarming expansion of the Communist Chinese Party’s assault on freedom in Hong Kong.”...