Timeline of reactions to the 2020 Hong Kong national security law (October 2020)
October events of the 2019–2020 pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Apart from protests on 1 October—the Chinese National Day—most of the significant events of the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests in October 2020 took place away from the streets, and many of them outside Hong Kong and China. The threat to protests posed by the national security law was exacerbated by continued uncertainty about the fate of twelve detainees who had attempted to escape to Taiwan by boat in August, and were held across the border in Shenzhen; on 10 October, Hong Kong police detained nine further individuals in relation to that incident. In addition, the Hong Kong government did not relax the four-person gathering limit that had been enacted in the course of the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the police continued to strictly enforce it. Pan-democrats in the city considered the restrictive gathering limit to be a pretext for curbing protests, also given that other pandemic related restrictions were relaxed in the course of the month.[1]
Several Western governments undertook actions that suggested that, in view of the developments surrounding the national security law, they no longer had full confidence regarding the ability of the Hong Kong judiciary to conduct fair trials according to Western standards. Canada accepted a couple from Hong Kong as refugees, while Germany accepted an alleged student protester. Both of these actions met with a rebuke by mainland and Hong Kong officials. On 22 October, the United Kingdom finalized a new visa arrangement specially designed for Hongkongers born before the 1997 handover of the city, creating an immigration path for them, to open in January 2021.