MPs are putting pressure on the UK government to launch a root and branch audit of assets held by Hong Kong and Chinese officials linked to human rights violations.
The letter is being sent to mark the upcoming secondary anniversary of the introduction of the National Security Law, which has seen civil society stamped out in Hong Kong with hundreds arrested and imprisoned.
The British MPs say the audit’s findings could serve as a pathway to the UK “finally introducing a Hong Kong specific Magnitsky-style sanctions specific sanctions list.”
“It is absolutely imperative that anybody accused of human rights violations, including in Hong Kong, is unable to hold assets or property here in the UK,” said one of the letter’s signatures, Siobhain McDonagh MP.
She added: “We must ask ourselves what it means to be complicit and whether our human rights rhetoric stands up to reality. A full audit of these assets is urgently needed.”
The letter also follows the arrests of a number of other prominent pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong under the Beijing enforced National Security Law—including 90-year-old Cardinal Zen, who was taken into custody last week.
It is also designed to dampen the upcoming installation as Kong Kong’s new Chief Executive, John Lee, the pro-Beijing hardliner taking over from current leader Carrie Lam, following the city’s chief executive election—in which he was the sole candidate.
Letter signer Tom Tugendhat MP, said a deeper understanding of the assets that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials hold in the UK is an important step.
“This work should start now,” he added.
Another signature, Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP, a prominent and vocal critic of Beijing in the British Parliament, said: "As we approach the second anniversary of Beijing enforcing its draconian National Security Law on Hong Kong, the Foreign Secretary should learn from the united western response to Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine and undertake an audit of the assets of Hong Kong and Chinese officials in the UK.”
Smith said this would serve as a pathway to the UK “finally introducing a Hong Kong specific Magnitsky-style sanctions list against those officials responsible for the ongoing human rights violations in the city.”
The so-called Magnitsky sanctions target those responsible for human rights violations or corruption—and the name derives from the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax lawyer who in 2007 uncovered a $230 million fraud committed by tax officials in the Russian Interior Ministry. He was jailed in Russia in 2008 on charges of tax evasion and died in prison in 2009, having suffered human rights violations while in detention.
Other nations have since enacted similar legislation. The U.S. Congress passed the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act in 2012, while the Global Human Rights Magnitsky Accountability Act was passed in 2016.
Other countries have also passed their own Magnitsky legislation, including Canada in 2017 and the European Union in 2020.
