EU parliament urges sanctions over Hong Kong jailing of activists

The European Union's parliament on Thursday called for sanctions against Chinese and Hong Kong officials over the jailing of three activists in Hong Kong for organising vigils for those killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

The jail terms of up to seven years ordered this month against Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, Chow Hang-tung, 41, and Albert Ho, 74, drew international condemnation.

MEPs overwhelmingly backed a non-binding resolution condemning the sentences, which were issued under a national security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in 2020 following huge pro-democracy protests.

Hong Kong and Macau were the only places on Chinese soil that allowed public mourning for those killed on June 4, 1989, when Beijing sent troops and tanks to crush protests calling for political reform around the capital's Tiananmen Square.

But public commemoration has been effectively banned in the cities in recent years.

The MEPs called on the European Commission to use the bloc's human rights sanctions regime "against all responsible HK (Hong Kong) and PRC (China) officials".

It said the commission should also start working on the "suspension" of Hong Kong's status in the World Trade Organization, where it is an official member separate from China.

"Hong Kong has become a tool of Beijing's foreign policy, a gateway for circumventing EU sanctions against Russia and tragically a place where there is no longer any space for democracy," conservative deputy Miriam Lexmann, from Slovakia, told the meeting.