289 BUSTED IN HK
Police break up vote-stall protests
Some 289 people were arrested in Hong Kong on Sunday at protests against the government’s decision to postpone elections for region’s legislature, police said.
The vote was to have taken place Sunday, but Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam on July 31 postponed them for one year.
Lam blamed an upsurge in coronavirus cases, but critics said her government worried the opposition would gain seats if voting went ahead on schedule.
Police said that most of the arrests were for unlawful assembly.
One woman was arrested in the Kowloon district of Yau Ma Tei on charges of assault and spreading proindependence slogans, the police department said on its Facebook page.
It said such slogans are illegal under a newly enacted Chinese national-security law.
Anti-government protests erupted last year over a proposed law that would have allowed criminal suspects to be extradited from Hong Kong to mainland China. The sometimes violent demonstrations spread to include demands for greater democracy and criticism of Beijing’s efforts to tighten control over the semiautonomous region that was once a British colony.
The coronavirus and the security law have diminished the protests this year, but smaller groups still take to the streets from time to time.
The ruling Communist Party’s decision to impose the law in May prompted complaints that it was violating the autonomy promised to the territory when it was returned to China from Britain in 1997.
In response, Washington withdrew trading privileges granted to Hong Kong, and other governments suspended extradition and other agreements on the grounds that the territory of 7 million people is no longer autonomous.
Also Sunday, police fired pepper balls at protesters in Kowloon’s Mongkok neighborhood, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported.
In the nearby Jordan neighborhood, protesters raised a banner criticizing the election delay, the Post said.