Secretary of State Michael Pompeo condemned Hong Kong's decision to delay its Legislative Council elections by a year and urged the city's government to reconsider.
"There is no valid reason for such a lengthy delay," Pompeo said in a statement released Sunday. "This regrettable action confirms that Beijing has no intention of upholding the commitments it made to the Hong Kong people and the United Kingdom under the Sino-British Joint Declaration, a UN-registered treaty, and the Basic Law."
"The reason for the delay is that the Chinese Communist Party candidates would be crushed, and the freedom-loving people of Hong Kong would prevail, and the leadership in Beijing simply can't permit that to happen," Pompeo said Sunday in an interview on Fox News Channel's "Sunday Morning Futures."
He added that the scheduling change shows the increased scope of threat from Beijing under the newly passed national security law.
Pompeo said Hong Kong authorities should hold the elections as close as possible to Sept. 6, the date for which they were originally scheduled. Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced the postponement Friday, citing a recent surge in coronavirus cases.
The Asian financial hub saw 121 coronavirus infections Friday after recording its highest tally yet Thursday. The city is grappling with a new wave of cases that has seen tighter restrictions -- including a two-person limit on public gatherings -- that could further affect traditional campaigning.
"Delaying the Legislative Council election held every four years is a very difficult decision," Lam said. "But in order to curb the pandemic, ensure public safety and citizens' health, and meanwhile ensure the election is held under an open and fair environment, this decision is necessary."
The government's decision follows a week in which at least a dozen opposition candidates were banned and four activists arrested.
Lam said she was invoking an emergency powers ordinance to delay the vote and that the government's decision had the support of China's central government. She said deploying as many as 34,000 election day volunteers across more than 600 polling stations to assist millions of voters was too dangerous under the circumstances. "It poses a great risk of infection," she said.
The postponement of the vote until Sept. 5, 2021, comes after Hong Kong's government drew new red lines on how much dissent it would tolerate -- and stands to intensify global concerns about the preservation of basic freedoms in the financial hub. President Donald Trump had already started to roll back the city's so-called special trading status amid wider tensions between the U.S. and China.
White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany told reporters Friday that the election delay "undermines the democratic processes and freedoms that have underpinned Hong Kong's prosperity, and this is only the most recent in a growing list of broken promises by Beijing."
Pro-democracy advocates had hoped to ride the momentum of a landslide victory in November's District Council vote to an unprecedented majority in the legislature. They are already reeling from the Beijing-imposed national security law in June, which has been widely criticized.
Opposition lawmaker Fernando Cheung said the delay and the disqualification of candidates amounted to "nothing less than election fraud."
"The pandemic was used purely as an excuse. The real reason for the delay is that the CCP is afraid it will lose by a landslide, much like what happened in the district elections in November last year," he said, referring to China's ruling Communist Party. "This is blatant repression, and the decision itself is unconstitutional."