The EU’s annual report on the city hit out at the tightening grip of Beijing on Hong Kong affairs, the “chilling effect on the exercise of protected rights and freedoms” brought by the national security law (NSL), and an uptick in “self-censorship in the media, academia and civil society”, reports The South China Morning Post.

However, the Hong Kong government dismissed the EU‘s report as “biased and ungrounded political smearing”, the newspaper reported.

Hong Kong, a former British colony, was handed over to China in 1997, and the Basic Law preserves its autonomy as a Special Administrative Region under the principle of “one country, two systems”.