Hong Kong legislators file to block mask ban
They fear rights at risk; protests let up
HONG KONG — A group of pro-democracy Hong Kong legislators filed a legal challenge Saturday against the government’s use of a colonial-era emergency law to criminalize the wearing of face masks at rallies to quell anti-government demonstrations, as the protests diminished in intensity but didn’t stop.
The mask ban that went into effect at midnight Friday triggered an overnight rash of widespread violence and destruction in the semiautonomous Chinese territory, including the setting of fires and attacks on an off-duty police officer who fired a live shot in self-defense that wounded a 14-year-old boy.
Two activists failed to obtain a court injunction Friday against the ban on
face coverings that the government says have made it tough for police to identify radical protesters.
In a second bid, lawmaker Dennis Kwok said 24 legislators filed a legal appeal to block the anti-mask law on wider constitutional grounds. He said the city’s leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, acted in bad faith by bypassing the Legislative Council, Hong Kong’s parliament, in invoking the emergency law.
“This is a Henry the 8th situation. This is basically I say what is law … and I say when that ceases to be law. That’s not how our constitution works,” Kwok said at a news conference late Saturday. “We say that she doesn’t have such powers, that she cannot avoid” the Legislative Council.
The court will hear the case this morning. Lam has said she will seek the council’s backing for the law when its session resumes Oct. 16 and hasn’t ruled out further measures if the violence continues.
Lawmaker Claudia Mo called the Emergency Ordinance a “weapon of mass destruction” that could pave the way for more draconian regulations.
Kwok said the lawmakers also asked the court to rule that the emergency law, enacted by British colonial rulers in 1922 to quell a seamen’s strike and last used in 1967 to crush riots, was incompatible with rights and freedoms under Hong Kong’s constitution that was put in place after it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
“The reason why the people were out there protesting against the extradition bill is because they feared that their freedoms will be taken away,” he said. “Now, [the government has] demonstrated that the fears are justified, that the Hong Kong government will do anything to take away the rights and freedoms of Hong Kong people.”
Lam addressed the city in a five-minute taped video released Saturday afternoon. On the tape, flanked by more than a dozen of her ministers, she spoke about the “unprecedented” levels of vandalism and destruction on Friday night.
“Fellow citizens, the extreme acts of the rioters brought dark hours to Hong Kong last night and half paralyzed society today,” Lam said. “Everyone is worried, anxious and even in fear. The [Hong Kong government] will curb the violence with the greatest determination.”
Many malls, shops and the network of subways and trains that usually handles more than 4 million trips a day was closed Saturday after the overnight demonstrations.
Many peaceful protesters say violence has become a means to an end, the only way for young masked protesters to force the government to bend to calls for full democracy and other demands.
But the shooting of the teen Friday night — the second victim of gunfire since the protests began in early June — stoked fears of more bloody confrontations. An 18-year-old protester also was shot at close range by a riot police officer on Tuesday.
Police said in a statement Saturday that the 14-yearold, who was hospitalized with a gunshot wound in his thigh, has been arrested for participating in a riot and assaulting a policeman. Police have said they are still investigating how he got shot.
A Hospital Authority spokesman said the teen was in serious but not critical condition.
MASKED DEFIANCE
The ban has triggered concerns that the government would take further steps to erode the civil liberties that have long differentiated Hong Kong from the rest of China and helped turn the city into an international trade and finance powerhouse. To many, the ban represents a turning point that could change the city’s identity and inflame tensions.
“How can we move on when there are such intense and deep-rooted divisions within our society?” said Wendy Ng, a 44-year-old part-time cooking instructor who was staying home Saturday because authorities had shut down the subway network. “The mask ban is making it worse, can’t they see?
“If the government does not make further concessions,” she added, “it’s over for this city, both for us and for those government officials who think of themselves as all-powerful.”
The ban announced Friday targets the face masks that protesters use to conceal their identities, but Lam could, if she deemed necessary later, use the emergency powers to impose a curfew or empower police to search phones more easily without warrants, among other measures.
Many of the protesters see the move against face masks essentially as a ban on their right to protest and believe it would antagonize those already angered by the city leaders’ refusal to grant them the free elections and other demands they have been pressing since the movement began in June.
The face-mask ban carries a maximum jail sentence of one year and a $3,200 fine. So far, police appear to have largely taken a hands-off approach to those defying the measure.
Protesters debated Saturday morning on Web forums and secure messaging apps the merits of “taking a rest” during the city shutdown, but others did not want to deliver the government a victory after the new government restriction. By 3 p.m., a few hundred people had begun marching peacefully from the shopping district of Causeway Bay. Later in the day, others linked hands in a vigil in the Tsim Sha Tsui area along Victoria Harbor and marched through Kowloon neighborhoods.
Like many of those who marched through the streets of the city’s Wan Chai neighborhood Saturday, Clare Fok, 43, a cosmetics sales clerk, made a point of concealing her face.
“I’ve never worn masks to marches before because they’re stuffy, and I’m beautiful,” Fok said cheekily through a swatch of gray fabric, a pair of aviator sunglasses hiding her eyes. “We are deliberately wearing masks today because we can’t accept the ban. They’re taking away our freedoms, and we won’t just obey because they tell us to.”
Protesters in masks popped up in the central business district Saturday afternoon, carrying a yellow banner marked “Glory to Hong Kong” and shouting, “Hong Kong, resist!” There were other scattered gatherings, with some holding hands in a long human chain and chanting anti-police slogans in an open-air stadium.
Trouble brewed at night, with police saying pockets of protesters again blocked roads and vandalized shops and public property in several districts but left before police arrived.
Protester numbers Saturday appeared down from previous weekends when tens of thousands flooded the streets. Some marchers said the protest movement was merely conserving strength for the long haul.
But the extensive violence has turned some to the government’s side, even though they blamed Lam for sparking the protest movement with a now-abandoned bill that would have allowed criminal suspects to be extradited for trial in Communist Party-controlled courts in mainland China.
“There is outright rioting,” said retiree Peter Tai, 67, stocking up on groceries for fear they might become hard to find.
“Protesters want democracy and freedom, but don’t they have freedom now? People can go anywhere and do things freely,” he said. “Freedom is more valuable than democracy. I hope these young people don’t do things they’ll regret forever.”
In Statue Square, a plaza in the historic heart of Hong Kong, Alice Ng, 31, joined other masked protesters who laughed and cheered as a man climbed on a bronze figure of Sir Thomas Jackson, a 19th-century British banker, and covered the statue’s head with one of the plastic helmets common among those who confront police and their tear-gas canisters.
A few minutes later, the mood changed when riot police officers charged into the plaza, briefly detained two people who wore masks and searched their backpacks. They also took a man who was wearing a bandanna over his face to a police vehicle.
“Daytime protests are peaceful,” Ng, an interior designer, said as the sun began to set. “But at night, it’s a different story.”
Information for this article was contributed by John Leicester, Eileen Ng and Katie Tam of The Associated Press; by Shibani Mahtani, Tiffany Liang and Timothy McLaughlin of The Washington Post; and by Andrew Jacobs, Mike Ives and Tiffany May of The New York Times.