Hongkongers who recently graduated from Canadian educational institutions will soon have a new pathway to permanent residency as Ottawa launches a three-year open work permit for them, citing “deep concerns” about the national security law.
Hong Kong
Britain launches new visa for millions of Hongkongers fleeing China’s crackdown
A new visa scheme offering millions of Hong Kong residents a pathway to British citizenship will go live on Sunday as the UK opens its doors to those wanting to escape China’s crackdown on dissent.
From Sunday afternoon, anyone with a British national overseas (BNO) passport and their dependents will be able to apply online for a visa allowing them to live and work in the UK. After five years they can then apply for citizenship.
300,000 dual citizens in Hong Kong must choose between Canada and China after policy change
Ottawa is growing increasingly concerned about the rights of 300,000 Canadian citizens in Hong Kong, after the territory’s government declared that dual citizens must choose the nationality they wish to maintain.
“Canada is aware of the Hong Kong government’s decision to require dual nationals to declare the nationality they wish to legally maintain while in Hong Kong,” said spokesperson John Babcock. “At this moment, we understand that this policy predominantly affects dual nationals serving prison sentences in Hong Kong. Canada has expressed its concern to the Hong Kong government about the possible loss of consular access that this change implies.”
Raymond De Souza: “Ottawa’s secret plan to host Chinese military, while ignoring the Two Michaels, makes for chilling reading”
Ezra Levant and his rambunctious Rebel Media have done Canadians a service, with merit aforethought. Our foreign affairs ministry did Levant a service, unwittingly, by answering an access to information request and forgetting to black out the embarrassing bits. The documents confirm that Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, at the two-year mark of their hostage taking in China, are getting no service at all from the highest levels of our diplomatic bureaucracy. …
The diplomats simply don’t get that this is about what China did unlawfully to the Two Michaels, not about what Canada did lawfully in arresting Meng. It seems superfluous for the PLA to send spies to Petawawa when its propaganda runs rampant on the senior floors of the Pearson building.
The bureaucrats, always punctilious in writing about “Ms. Meng” cannot bring themselves even to mention the Two Michaels by name, referring to them only as “consular cases” as if this might be a dispute about pork tariffs or a lost shipment of peaches, rather than kidnappings.
Canadians owe a debt of gratitude to that GAC functionary who “forgot” to black out the memoranda before sending them to Rebel Media. There were no national security secrets, just the secret attempts by our diplomatic high command to compromise our military secrets and degrade our dignity, quailing before tyranny and not lifting a finger for the Two Michaels.
Also:
The Liberal government was dismayed when the Canadian military cancelled winter exercises with China’s People’s Liberation Army, according to top secret documents published Wednesday. …
One of the concerns from the U.S. related to “undesired knowledge transfer” from Canada to China.
A February 2019 memo to Ian Shugart, deputy minister of foreign affairs, reads, “Should Canada make any significant reductions in its military engagement with China, China will likely read this as a retaliatory move related to the Meng Wanzhou case.”
The memo also said that if DND/CAF cancelled other events there should be “careful communication strategies” to avoid it being linked to the Meng case.
(Sidebar: I call bullsh–. The Chinese have no intention of releasing those two men and the Trudeau hand puppets don’t want to upset their Chinese bosses.)
Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun has warned that the recent arrest of Jimmy Lai shows a rise in “political intimidation” against journalists in Hong Kong, part of a systematic erosion of basic freedoms, including religious freedom, by the Chinese government in recent months.
Beijing Slams US Sanctions on Top Lawmakers: ‘Outrageous, Unscrupulous, Crazy and Vile’
China reacted with fury on Tuesday after the Trump administration targeted for sanctions 14 senior lawmakers in the country’s top legislative body, including one of the 25 members of the Chinese Communist Party’s Politiburo, in a further U.S. response to Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong’s long-cherished democracy.