Sir Richard Ottaway, the chair of the UK Foreign Affairs Committee, spoke to news anchor Beverley O’Connor of Australia’s ABC News 24 about the current “social unrest” in Hong Kong and China.
The chair says that Beijing’s accusations of the committee meddling in their internal affairs could not be “further from the truth”, adding that it’s actually a “misunderstanding” on the part of the Chinese government over what his committee’s job is.
Ottaway said that the committee’s mission, in the wake of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, is to “exercise oversight of the Foreign Office and monitor what’s going on in Hong Kong” to ensure that declaration is carried out as agreed.
He continued by insisting that they are “not going to be put off by a fairly aggressive response, not just from the People’s Congress but the Chinese government and indeed the Hong Kong executive”.
When asked by O’Connor whether it’s understandable that China might be nervous about having two “parallel governments” and it potentially causing unrest in the mainland, Ottaway responded simply: “Well they agreed to it, and they’ve committed to maintaining this parallel form of government for the next fifty years.”
Attaboy, Ottaway!
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