Six Chinese diplomatic personnel were forced to leave Britain this week for their alleged roles in assaulting protesters at the Chinese Consulate in Manchester in October. British parliamentarians and rights defenders welcomed this development, even as they criticized 10 Downing Street for not acting sooner.
“Six Chinese Consulate officials, including the consul general, are being removed from the U.K., following the disgraceful incident in October,” British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said. .Cleverly added that British authorities requested diplomatic immunity to be waived for the consulate officials so they could be questioned by Manchester police in connection to their roles in the violent incident of October 16.
“We all saw the disturbing footage of the incident outside the Chinese Consulate in Manchester. … We informed the Chinese Embassy of that, and we set a deadline which expired today, making clear that we expected them to take action,” Cleverly said in a taped video message released on Wednesday.
Chinese Consul General Zheng Xiyuan and other men from the consulate were captured on camera kicking down banners that had been put up by several dozen protesters. One of the protesters, later identified as Bob Chan, who moved to Britain from Hong Kong, was seen being dragged into the consulate and beaten.
“Due to our fears for the safety of the man, officers intervened and removed the victim [Chan] from the consulate grounds,” Manchester police said later in a statement.
While Beijing called Zheng’s departure from Britain “a normal rotation” and insisted that “it’s for us to determine the duration of posting of members of Chinese diplomatic and consular missions,” British media cast the forced departure of Zheng and others who would otherwise have been questioned by British police as “fleeing”.
