U.S. House passes Hong Kong rights bills, Trump expected to sign
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[November 21, 2019]
By Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of
Representatives on Wednesday passed two bills to back protesters in Hong
Kong and send a warning to China about human rights, with President
Donald Trump expected to sign them into law, despite delicate trade
talks with Beijing.
The House sent the bills to the White House after voting 417 to 1 for
the "Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act," which the Senate passed
unanimously on Tuesday. Strong support had been expected after the House
passed a similar bill last month.
The measure, which has angered Beijing, would require the State
Department to certify at least once a year that Hong Kong retains enough
autonomy to qualify for the special U.S. trading consideration that
helped it become a world financial center.
It also would provide for sanctions against officials responsible for
human rights violations in the Chinese-ruled city.
Demonstrators have protested for more than five months in the streets of
Hong Kong, amid increasing violence and fears that Beijing will ratchet
up its response to stop the civil disobedience.
The protesters are angry at what they see as Chinese meddling in the
freedoms promised to Hong Kong when Britain handed it back to China in
1997.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio was a main sponsor of the Senate-passed
bill, which was co-sponsored by Republican Senator Jim Risch and
Democratic Senators Bob Menendez and Ben Cardin.
The House passed, by 417 to zero, a second bill, which the Senate also
approved unanimously on Tuesday, to ban the export of certain
crowd-control munitions to Hong Kong police forces. That measure bans
the export of items such as tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and
stun guns.
President Trump has 10 days, excluding Sundays, to sign a bill passed by
Congress, unless he opts to use his veto.
A person familiar with the matter said the president intended to sign
the bills into law, not veto them.
Vetoes would have been difficult to sustain, since the measures passed
both the Republican-controlled Senate and Democratic-controlled House
with almost no objections.
A two-thirds majority would be required in both the Senate and House to
override a veto.
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for
comment.
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A protester is escorted by medical staff out of the Hong Kong
Polytechnic University (PolyU) in Hong Kong, China, November 20,
2019. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
In Beijing on Wednesday, China condemned the legislation's passage,
and vowed strong countermeasures to safeguard its sovereignty and
security.
China's foreign ministry said this month that China had lodged
"stern representations" with the United States about the legislation
and urged that it not be passed into law, saying it would not only
harm Chinese interests and China-U.S. relations, but the United
States' own interests too.
It said China would "inevitably take vigorous measures to firmly
respond, to staunchly safeguard our sovereignty, security and
development interests."
Trump prompted questions about his commitment to protecting freedoms
in Hong Kong when he referred in August to its mass street protests
as "riots" that were a matter for China to deal with.
Trump has since called on China to handle the issue humanely, while
warning that if anything bad happened in Hong Kong, it could be bad
for talks to end a trade war between the world's two largest
economies.
On Thursday, the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s main newspaper,
the People’s Daily, urged the United States to "rein in the horse at
the edge of the precipice" and stop interfering in Hong Kong matters
and China’s internal affairs.
"If the U.S. side obstinately clings to its course, the Chinese side
will inevitably adopt forceful measures to take resolute revenge,
and all consequences will be borne by the United States," it said in
a front-page editorial.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Patricia Zengerle, additional
reporting by Matt Spetalnick and David Brunnstrom; Editing by
Jonathan Oatis and Clarence Fernandez)
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