China appoints hardliner as head of Hong Kong national security agency
China appoints hardliner as head of Hong Kong national security agency
LUCKNOW (AFP) - Eight policemen have been shot dead in India after being ambushed as they went to arrest a murder suspect, authorities said Friday. BEIJING, July 3, 2020 (AFP) - China appointed a hardliner known for stamping out protests on the mainland as the head of Hong Kong’s new security agency on Friday, state media said, days after imposing a sweeping law on the territory that criminalises dissent.
Zheng Yanxiong will take the helm of the controversial national security agency set up under the legislation that empowers mainland security agents to operate inside Hong Kong openly for the first time, unbound by the city’s laws.
The office -- which has investigative and prosecutory powers -- will monitor intelligence related to national security and process cases, in some circumstances handing them over to mainland authorities.
Zheng rose through the ranks of the local government in southern Guangdong province which borders Hong Kong, to serve as secretary general of the provincial Communist Party committee.
The 56-year-old is known as a hardliner who stamped out often-violent anti-corruption protests that erupted in Wukan, a village in the province, in 2011.
Hong Kong was rocked by several months of huge and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests last year, a movement which Beijing is keen to suppress through the new law.
On the same day, the State Council also named Luo Huining -- currently director of Beijing’s Liaison Office in the semi-autonomous city -- as the national security adviser to the city’s newly-formed national security commission chaired by Chief Executive Carrie Lam.
The State Council on Thursday also appointed veteran Hong Kong official Eric Chan Kwok-ki as the commission’s secretary general.
The commission -- also created by the new law -- will oversee policy formulation relating to the national security law in Hong Kong.
Chan previously served as the director of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive’s Office, before which he was the territory’s head of immigration.
At least seven other people were injured in the nighttime incident in a village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
State police chief HC Awasthi told reporters that the suspect "had the support of the entire village as there was firing from several rooftops".
Prashant Kumar, another senior policeman, said the attackers, who had obstructed the entrance to the village with an excavator, appeared to have been armed with semi-automatic weapons.
"It was a planned attack," Kumar told reporters.
Media reports said the suspect had a long criminal history including the alleged murder of a politician and state minister in 2001 and was wanted over another 60 crimes.
His gang, thought to number seven or eight, fled the village after the ambush and a major operation was under way on Friday to track them down, police said.
