Pompeo deeply troubled by Hong Kong tycoon arrest

Last Monday U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said to be “deeply troubled” by the news of the Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai’s arrest “under Hong Kong’s draconian National Security Law”.

Mike Pompeo speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC (by Gage Skidmore, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license)

Lai is at the moment the highest-profile among the arrests on Monday under the new national security law over suspected collusion with foreign forces. Around 200 police officers participated to break in the offices of Apple Daily newspaper he owns.

“Further proof that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) has eviscerated Hong Kong’s freedoms and eroded the rights of its people,” Pompeo said in a Twitter post.

White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien expressed the same concerns in a different statement: “we are deeply troubled by the arrest of Jimmy Lai”.

According to O’Brien the arrest of Lai and of others has to be intended as an effort to intimidate pro-democracy opposition and independent media.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-security-jimmylai-usa/pompeo-deeply-troubled-by-hong-kong-tycoon-arrest-idUSKCN256211