The Hong Kong government has hit out at British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, rejecting his claims about the city’s national security law as political smearing, fact twisting and malicious fabrication.

The rebuttal came on Tuesday, a day after Cleverly said at the United Nations Human Rights Council that civil rights in Hong Kong were under threat after Beijing’s imposition of the security legislation in 2020.

Cleverly said in his address that under the national security law, independent media outlets had been forced to close down, while those who spoke out, including journalists or businessmen such as the founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, had been arrested.