US condemns Hong Kong's arrest warrants, bounties for overseas activists

By Asiye Latife Yilmaz

ISTANBUL (AA) - US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday condemned Hong Kong’s issuance of arrest warrants and bounties for overseas-based activists, including individuals currently residing in the US.

“The extraterritorial targeting of Hong Kongers who are exercising their fundamental freedoms is a form of transnational repression,” Rubio said in a statement.

He said that Washington, DC, will “not tolerate the Hong Kong government’s attempts to apply its national security laws to silence or intimidate Americans or anyone on U.S. soil.”

Rubio also added that the Hong Kong government “continues to erode the autonomy that Beijing itself promised to the people of Hong Kong following the 1997 handover.”

Early Friday, Hong Kong’s national security police announced arrest warrants for 19 activists based overseas, accusing them of subversion under a stringent national security law. It also offered bounties for 15 of the activists.