WASHINGTON – The Trump administration put sanctions on Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, the Asian financial hub’s current and former police chiefs, and other top officials in August for what it said was their role in curtailing freedoms. “Beijing’s unrelenting assault against Hong Kong’s democratic processes has gutted its Legislative Council, rendering the body a rubber stamp devoid of meaningful opposition,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement. Hong Kong’s now Beijing controlled government fired four opposition members from it’s legislature, ensuring mainland communist China gave local authorities new powers to curb so-called dissent. White House national security adviser Robert O’Brie, said in November the expulsion showed the “One Country, Two Systems” formula, under which Hong Kong’s autonomy was to be safeguarded after Britain handed the territory back to China in 1997, was now “merely a fig leaf”, and he promised further U.S. action. 

Pompeo said the NPCSC has effectively “neutered” the ability of people in Hong Kong to choose their elected representatives. “These actions demonstrate once again Beijing’s complete disregard for its international commitments under the Sino-British Joint Declaration, a UN-registered treaty.”

The sanctions prohibit the 14 individuals and their immediate members from coming to the US and has blocked U.S companies from communicating with them.

(Compiled from Reuters for the Guilford Voyager by Hailey Skaggs, original reporting by Humeyra Pamuk)