China suspends extradition treaty with New Zealand
China has suspended its extradition agreement with New Zealand in response to Wellington suspending its existing extradition treaty with Hong Kong.
New Zealand suspended the extradition treaty with Hong Kong last week, citing the enactment of a uniform national security law in the semi-autonomous Chinese city.
“New Zealand can no longer trust that Hong Kong’s criminal justice system is sufficiently independent from China,” Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said on Tuesday, adding, “If China in future shows adherence to the ‘one country, two systems’ framework then we could reconsider this decision.”
Earlier, Canada, Australia, and Britain had suspended their extradition agreements with Hong Kong over the same matter.
Wenbin said last Tuesday that the security law had been an “an excuse” for those countries to unilaterally suspend their extradition treaties with the Chinese region.
The United States, which has already ended the preferential economic treatment of Hong Kong, is also preparing to suspend its own extradition treaty with the city.
The US, New Zealand, Canada, Britain, and Australia are members of the so-called “Five Eyes” (FVEY) intelligence alliance.
Hong Kong’s new security law, detested by Western governments, punishes crimes of secession, subversion, and collusion with foreign forces with sentences of up to life in prison in Hong Kong.
Under the law, mainland security agencies are also officially based in Hong Kong for the first time since 1997, when the city’s rule returned from Britain to China.
Hong Kong has been governed under the “one-country, two-system” model since then, meaning that Chinese sovereignty is applied to the city even as it has its own government.
SOURCE: PRESS TV
