Beijing bares iron fist
● First arrests of protesters in Hong Kong under draconian new security law
Hong Kong police made the first arrests under Beijing’s new national security law yesterday as the city greeted the anniversary of its handover to China with protesters fleeing water cannon.
Police deployed water cannon, pepper spray and teargas throughout the afternoon, arresting more than 180 people, seven of them for breaching the new national security law.
The commemorations came a day after China imposed a sweeping security law on the city, a historic move decried by many Western governments as an unprecedented assault on the finance hub’s liberties and autonomy.
Certain political views and symbols became illegal overnight, including showing support for Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang and Tibet independence.
Police said people had been arrested for carrying Hong Kong independence signs.
“Advocacy for independence of Hong Kong is against the law,” security minister John Lee told reporters.
A few thousand protesters defied a ban on rallies to gather in the shopping district of Causeway Bay yesterday, blocking some roads.
“What this authoritarian regime wants to do is to terrorise the people and stop them from coming out,” Chris To, a 49-year-old protester, said.
After huge and often violent pro-democracy protests last year, authorities have shown zero tolerance for even peaceful rallies in recent months.
During huge pro-democracy demonstrations last year, the city’s legislature was besieged and trashed by protesters.
Gatherings of more than 50 people are at present banned under anti-coronavirus laws even though local transmissions have ended.
The July 1 anniversary has long been a polarising day in the city.
Beijing loyalists celebrate Hong Kong’s return to the Chinese motherland after a century and a half of what they consider humiliating colonial rule by Britain.
During a morning anniversary ceremony yesterday, helicopters flew across Victoria Harbour carrying a large Chinese flag and a smaller Hong Kong pennant, while a barge appeared with a banner reading “Welcome the Enacting of the National Security Law” in giant Chinese characters.
Small groups of Beijing supporters waved Chinese flags in several local neighbourhoods, untroubled by police.
Democracy advocates have used the occasion to hold large rallies as popular anger towards Beijing swells — though this year’s event was banned for the first time in 17 years.
More than two dozen countries — including Britain, France, Germany and Japan — urged Beijing to reconsider the new law, saying it undermines the city’s freedoms.
It outlaws subversion, secession, terrorism and colluding with foreign forces to undermine national security, with sentences of up to life in prison.
It also topples the legal firewall that has existed between the city’s judiciary and the mainland’s party-controlled courts.
China will have jurisdiction over “serious” cases and its security agencies will also be able to operate publicly in the city for the first time.
Another provision also claims universal jurisdiction for national security crimes committed beyond Hong Kong or China.
Canada, meanwhile, warned citizens in Hong Kong that they faced an increased risk of arbitrary detention or even extradition to China.
Under a deal ahead of the 1997 handover from Britain, authoritarian China guaranteed Hong Kong civil liberties as well as judicial and legislative autonomy until 2047 in a deal known as “One Country, Two Systems”.
The formula helped cement Hong Kong’s status as a worldclass business hub, bolstered by an independent judiciary and political freedoms unseen on the mainland.
“[China] promised 50 years of freedom to the Hong Kong people, and gave them only 23,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, as he promised unspecified countermeasures.
But Beijing said foreign countries should keep quiet about the law, while Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam hailed the legislation as the “most important development” since the city’s return to Beijing’s rule.
Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of the State Council’s Zhang Xiaoming insisted that the law — which he said cannot be applied retrospectively — was only to target “a handful of criminals” and “not the entire opposition camp”.
“The purpose of enacting Hong Kong’s national security law is definitely not to target Hong Kong’s opposition camp, pro-democracy camp, as the enemy,” he said.