China emphasizes rule of law over Hong Kong detained

China emphasized that its handling of a case involving 12 Hong Kongers who tried to flee to Taiwan was in accordance of rule of law after their sentence was announced on Wednesday morning.

"China is a country under the rule of law, where laws must be followed and violations must be punished. China's judicial organs handled the case in strict accordance of the law," said Wang Wenbin, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, in a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.

Ten Hong Kongers, who were tried on Monday, were sentenced to seven months to three years in prison after they were found guilty of crossing the border illegally or organizing others to do so. Another two detainees, who are minors, were sent back to Hong Kong.The 12 have been detained by authorities in the southern China city of Shenzhen since late August after a failed attempt to flee to Taiwan from Hong Kong.

Family members and activists have long questioned the legal procedures of the detention and the trial, and they argued that the detainees' human rights were not guaranteed. Some foreign diplomats in China have called for a more transparent trial.The EU, despite the recent investment negotiations with China, spoke up in another high-profile case involving a citizen journalist Zhang Zhan and called for her release.

Wang said that China firmly opposes foreign forces' interference in Chinese internal affairs and sovereignty of the judiciary.

We urge the European side to abide by international laws and the basic principles for international relations, and stop interfering with Chinese judiciary sovereignty and internal affairs in any forms, he added.

In response to the situation of Italian sailors stranded outside Chinese ports, Wang said Italy had raised relevant demands with China and that the two sides were in close communication, but gave no further details.

Wang also denied the conclusion of a Bloomberg news report suggesting that the scale of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan may have been nearly ten times higher, an extrapolation that was based on a serological survey conducted by China's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Experts believe that the gap has occurred mainly because of the characteristics of the disease, the behavior of the infected person, the capacity of conducting nucleic acid tests, and the method of how the survey was conducted," he explained.

Therefore, the total number of those infected cannot be obtained simply by multiplying the results and the population of the area.

(IMAGE CREDITS:AP)