Daily Times

Hong Kong is China’s internal matter and any foreign interference in its affairs is in total violation of the international law and the diplomatic norms, a senator has said.

“China knows how to handle the situation (in Hong Kong) … We support China on the policy of Hong Kong,” Mushahid Hussain Syed, chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs told Xinhua in an interview. Pakistan fully supports stability and prosperity of Hong Kong and believes that it should not be undermined by any unrest, he said, adding that his country rejects any external interference in Hong Kong as it is an issue of China’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.

The senator rebuked western media for negative propaganda on the situation in Hong Kong, saying the US media has a tradition of spreading fake news. “They (the western media) are trying to raise the temperature politically to put pressure on China and to destabilise China. So there is always something (in the US media’s plan) called the ‘China Card’, something to put pressure on China … Now it is Hong Kong,” he said. To misguide the world about the real situation in Hong Kong and create undue hype of the protests, western media reports are spreading false information by giving inflated figures of the number of the protestors, he said. “The purpose is to convey messages and to convey a narrative as if the whole of Hong Kong is in revolt, which is not true at all. They want to encourage and fan the flames of unrest, because it suits them,” he added.

The senator questioned the double standards of western social media giants Twitter and Facebook for their politically motivated censorship policy, under which they have suspended hundreds of accounts unveiling real images of violence riots in Hong Kong. He said some images of recent meetings between a US diplomat and Hong Kong’s riot figures and separatists have surfaced which clearly shows the US involvement and interference in Hong Kong. “We have seen this pattern is being followed in some of the color revolutions, which was used by the United States to deploy, to destabilise certain countries of the world, (as) the same pattern we see in Hong Kong,” he said.

Hong Kong’s GDP reached 360 billion US dollars in 2018, over twice that of 1996. The number of visitors to Hong Kong soared from 10.4 million in 1997 to more than 65 million in 2018.

Given the economic development of Hong Kong in the last 20 years, the ‘one country, two systems’ policy has proved to be a success, the senator said. “Now Hong Kong has new opportunities brought by the Belt and Road Initiative, as Hong Kong is part of the maritime silk road,” he said. “Hong Kong belongs to China … its future will feature prosperity, peace and progress,” he said, adding that no one can separate Hong Kong from China.