Controversy over a new cross- border rail link which will see mainland laws enforced in a Hong Kong train station escalated today after the justice chief likened China to the city's "landlord".
Controversy over a new cross- border rail link which will see mainland laws enforced in a Hong Kong train station escalated today after the justice chief likened China to the city's "landlord".
It comes at a time when fears are worsening that Hong Kong's freedoms are under threat from an increasingly assertive Beijing.
There are already concerns that Chinese operatives are working undercover after the alleged abductions of a city bookseller and a reclusive mainland businessman.
The high-speed rail line between Hong Kong and the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, 80 miles away, is due to open in 2018.
Its Hong Kong terminus will be in the heart of the semi- autonomous city, on its famous harbourfront, not near the boundary with China that lies further north.
But the Beijing-friendly government wants to create a joint immigration point which would mean parts of the station, the platforms and the train cabins would fall under Chinese jurisdiction and would be patrolled by mainland officials.
Critics say the plan is a clear breach of the city's mini-constitution, the Basic Law, which guarantees freedoms unseen on the mainland and prohibits its law enforcers operating in Hong Kong.
Justice secretary Rimsky Yuen stoked opponents by likening the arrangement to the relationship between a landlord and tenant.
"The landlord has rented a house to me and then realised he didn't have enough space and asks me, can you rent a room to me? He has that right," he said on a radio talk show yesterday.
Yuen's comments alarmed the pro-democracy camp which has now formed a concern group.
"If China is our landlord, that means they could ask us to give back land any time," opposition lawmaker Tanya Chan told
(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
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