HKBA chair's statements roundly condemned

The Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council on Friday condemned recent remarks made by Paul Harris, the new chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association, over the National Security Law for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

After being elected, Harris claimed immediately some of the provisions of the National Security Law, drafted by the National People's Congress Standing Committee and promulgated in the HKSAR on June 30, appeared at odds with the rights guaranteed under the Basic Law.

He also said the earlier arrest of 55 individuals by the Hong Kong police on charges of subversion under the National Security Law is "deliberate intimidation of the democratic movement".

"Harris clamored for revising Hong Kong's national security law and questioned the authority of the NPC Standing Committee, pointing his finger at the central government," a spokesperson of the office said in a statement issued on Friday.

"It was not law but politics that he talked about, which befitted his political character," the spokesperson said.

Harris is hostile to the Communist Party of China and has been spreading discredited and offensive remarks against China for a long time. He declared that "Hong Kong independence" could be openly discussed, used his British identity to collude with foreign powers to interfere in Hong Kong affairs and took an unusually keen interest in protests and fuelled them in various ways, the statement said.

"It's obvious his political intention is to disrupt the Hong Kong National Security Law, challenge the constitutional order of the HKSAR and turn the high degree of autonomy of Hong Kong into full autonomy to confront the central government," the statement said.

In recent years, the Hong Kong Bar Association has deviated from the norms of conduct that should be expected of a professional body and become increasingly politicized under the influence of a small number of anti-Chinese activists, and now people like Harris are nudging it further in the wrong direction, the statement added.

The spokesman reiterated the bottom line of the "one country, two systems" principle should not be challenged and said: "No one or any organization should have any illusion they can play with fire without consequences".

He called on legal professionals to recognize the sinister intentions of people like Harris.

"Hong Kong's legal discourse system has become outdated under their control, and now it is time to put things right and clean up," the spokesman added.