Some 88,000 Hong Kong people have applied to settle in the UK on a new citizenship visa, London said in a report on Tuesday condemning China’s crackdown on dissent in the United Kingdom. former British colony.
The UK opened a new visa process for more than 5 million Hong Kong people in January in response to the National Security Act imposed by Beijing in June 2020.
This legislation is used to muzzle any dissent, which London sees as a violation of the promise made by Beijing, during the surrender of the territory in 1997, to maintain the autonomy of Hong Kong and its freedoms.
“At the end of September, 88,000 people had applied for a visa under this program. On behalf of the government, I warmly welcome them to the UK, ”UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss wrote in a biannual report on Hong Kong.
London had forecast nearly 154,000 requests in the first year and 322,000 in five years.
Applicants must hold a British National Overseas Passport (BNO), issued to Hong Kong people born before the colony’s handover to China in 1997 and their minor children.
China has condemned the UK’s resettlement offer and said it will no longer recognize the BNO passport as a legal document.
Relations between Britain and China have soured after the crackdown on major pro-democracy protests that rocked Hong Kong in 2019 and following accusations of human rights violations by China in the Xinjiang region.
The report released Tuesday estimates that China is “in a state of permanent non-compliance with its international obligations” regarding Hong Kong.
The national security law has been used against “all the opposition, the free press and civil society,” the document adds, referring to the text Beijing imposed on Hong Kong last year.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been asked to extend the visa program to young Hong Kong people not eligible for the BNO passport as many of the 2019 protesters were from the younger generations.
A recent survey published by the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory highlighted that a third of Hong Kong people with BNO passports were considering moving to the UK.