Hong Kong Watch announces new patrons in US, Canada and UK in Global Advocacy Drive
The President of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), former US Ambassador to Burma/Myanmar Derek Mitchell, and the former US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, head the list of new international Patrons of Hong Kong Watch, the organisation announced today.
Ambassador Mitchell is a US diplomat with extensive experience in Asia policy, having served as former President Obama’s Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense responsible for Asia-Pacific Affairs. He has also pursued a distinguished career at NDI and at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Ambassador Mitchell appeared in Hong Kong Watch’s interview series, In Conversation With Benedict Rogers, last December.
Ambassador Brownback is a former Governor of Kansas, former United States Senator from 1996-2011, and a former Presidential candidate in 2008. He has been a long-standing champion of human rights around the world, and has been an outspoken voice for freedom in China and Hong Kong in particular. In 2019, as US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, he visited Hong Kong and addressed the Foreign Correspondents Club. In January Ambassador Brownback spoke with Hong Kong Watch’s Chief Executive Benedict Rogers for our interview series.
Canada’s former Justice Minister and Attorney General Irwin Cotler, who chairs the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, Senator Jim Munson, former Whip of the Senate Liberal Caucus and former Chair of the Senate Human Rights Committee, Senator Leo Housakos, former Speaker of the Senate and a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and James Bezan MP, Shadow Minister for National Defence and Vice Chair of the Standing Committee on National Defence join Canada’s former Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific David Kilgour and Shadow Minister for International Development and Human Rights Garnett Genuis MP as Canadian Patrons of Hong Kong Watch. The organisation has engaged actively in advocacy in Ottawa over the past three years and is now in the process of establishing a Canadian branch to further enhance our presence in Canada.
British Labour Member of Parliament Sarah Champion MP, who chairs the House of Commons International Development Committee, also joins Hong Kong Watch’s existing Patrons who include the last Governor of Hong Kong Lord Patten of Barnes, former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Labour’s Shadow Europe Minister Catherine West MP, the Liberal Democrats’ Shadow Home Secretary Alistair Carmichael MP, the independent Peer Lord Alton of Liverpool, Conservative MP Fiona Bruce, barrister Sir Geoffrey Nice QC and South Korea’s former human rights ambassador Jung-Hoon Lee.
Hong Kong Watch’s co-founder and Chief Executive Benedict Rogers said: “We are absolutely delighted to be able to expand our board of Patrons, and to be joined by such distinguished figures who enhance our bi-partisan and global reach as an international organisation working for the basic freedoms, human rights, rule of law and autonomy of the people of Hong Kong. In just a few years Hong Kong Watch has established a reputation as the ‘go-to’ organisation for Hong Kong policy, research and advocacy, and our new Patrons will clearly further strengthen our efforts. The dismantling of Hong Kong’s freedoms, in total breach of an international agreement, is not an ‘internal’ affair for China, nor is it the preserve solely of bilateral relations between China and the UK, vital though that is, but it is a matter of concern to the international community and to the free world as a whole, and that’s why our work is supported globally, in such a bipartisan way, and it is why we will continue to expand our advocacy for Hong Kong.”