San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
China supporters rally to denounce violent ‘rioters’
HONG KONG — Only after finding safety in numbers, joining hundreds of other progovernment demonstrators in Hong Kong on Saturday, did Reddy Lin drum up the courage to slip into her red Tshirt marked “China, I love you” and glue a heartshaped Chineseflag sticker on her face.
But for the train ride home, the teacher said she would take all her proChina garb off. The risk of running into supporters from the rival camp, those who oppose China’s communist rulers, was simply too great, she said.
“It’s very dangerous. They’ll beat you,” she said. “They’re brutes.”
Lin and hundreds of other demonstrators waving red Chinese flags packed a Hong
Kong park to denounce what they say is a reign of terror being imposed on the city by months of antigovernment demonstrations. The protest highlighted the widening gulf between the pro and antigovernment camps in Hong Kong, with divisions that appear irreconcilable. Compared to the hundreds of antigovernment rallies that have gripped Hong Kong since June, the proChina demonstration was like stepping through a looking glass. The Hong Kong police were praised as saviors, not bullies. China was presented as a country to love, not fear. Hong Kong was described as a city freer than most, instead of a place losing its liberties.
Chief among the demonstrators’ complaints was that they have grown scared of the blackclad, frequently violent hard core of the antigovernment movement.
Calling them “rioters,” many said the protesters are destroying Hong Kong’s freedoms, rather than protecting them, by resorting to violence.
The police force has become hated by many antigovernment protesters, furious over riot officers’ liberal use of choking tear gas and thousands of often muscular arrests. A call for an independent probe of police behavior features among the antigovernment movement’s main demands.
Hong Kong’s new police commissioner, Chris Tang, said Saturday in Beijing that he’ll adopt both “hard and soft approaches” for policing protests. He spoke after his first meetings with Chinese officials since his appointment last month.
Hurling gasoline bombs or stones are “violent actions we will not tolerate,” he said. “But for other incidents, such as protesters walking offroad or other minor incidents, we will take humanistic and flexible approaches.”
John Leicester is an Associated Press writer.