For example, the recent National Security Law allows non-jury trials, which seems to me taken directly from the Northern Ireland playbook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplock_court

There are a some interesting NI court case(s?) which I've encountered in the past couple years relating to riots that were occasionally cited in the Hong Kong court which escapes me right now.

Anyway the point is that while freedoms are indeed being eroded in Hong Kong, it's a fallacy to paint the British colonial rule as benevolent just to make a point. (Most of the freedoms were granted to Hong Kong in the 1990s _after_ UK signed the Sino British joint declaration, it worked as a narrative to kind of force the Chinese government to revert a bunch of freedoms and hence the UK escaped most of the blame for making much of those those repressive laws in the first place)