Hong Kong is set to tone down Chinese National Day celebrations, including moving guests indoors at the traditional flag-raising ceremony on October 1, to avoid potentially chaotic disruptions by anti-government protesters who are poised to escalate their actions to embarrass Beijing.
After another weekend of violence, there was strong condemnation on Monday of radical protesters who trashed MTR stations, took over shopping malls to vandalise store fronts, hurled petrol bombs, blocked roads and desecrated the national flag. But the city’s embattled leader vowed to press ahead against all odds with her first town hall dialogue with the community.
VIPs attending the cocktail reception at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai on October 1 have been informed on their invitation cards that they will stay indoors to watch a live broadcast of the flag-raising ceremony at the Golden Bauhinia Square waterfront.
The arrangement will be similar to that on July 1 for the handover anniversary, when Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and other dignitaries watched the flag-raising ceremony on a screen.
“In view of the recent atmosphere in society, we will arrange for guests to stay indoors to watch the flag-raising ceremony so as to ensure it can be held in an orderly and solemn manner,” a Home Affairs Department spokesman said, adding that 12,000 guests would be invited.
Chinese University political scientist Ivan Choy Chi-keung saw it as an attempt by the government to avoid protest embarrassment.
“I think Beijing has come to terms with the reality that ceremonies like these can’t be held in a decent manner amid the long-standing protests,” Choy said.
Guests have also been reminded that parking spaces will not be available at the venue.
“In previous years, we could go to Expo Drive and park in the [convention centre] car park,” an invitee told the Post.
In a recent audio recording leaked to Reuters, Lam was heard saying at a closed-door meeting that the government had made a “special arrangement” for National Day.
“There will be National Day celebrations, but we are still having a lot of disruptions so we are going for modest but solemn celebrations on October 1,” she was heard saying.
The government announced last week that the annual National Day fireworks would be cancelled as well because of the ongoing civil unrest.
Flag desecration by Hong Kong protesters is ‘blasphemy’: Chinese state media
But in a message posted on her Facebook page on Monday, Lam said: “There is a way out no matter how difficult it is. Let’s engage in dialogue.”
She is set to meet 150 residents in Wan Chai on Thursday for her first Community Dialogue session, an event for which 20,237 people have registered to take part in.
While Lam did not mention the violence over the weekend, the city’s first chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, issued a statement warning that the protests had pushed the city to the brink.
“I’m angry because I saw extremely violent people openly desecrate, stamp on and burn the national flag. It is an open challenge to national dignity and the bottom line of ‘one country, two systems’,” said Tung, a vice-chairman of China’s top political advisory body.
In a commentary published on Sunday night, the official Xinhua news agency slammed protesters for desecrating the national flag time and again.
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“For the past three months … some rioters have made the national flag the target of destruction and abuse,” Xinhua said. “Not only is this an intentional act of breaking the law, an insult to the country and race, it is also blasphemy against the entire Chinese people, including those in Hong Kong.”
It also called on Hongkongers remaining silent so far to serve as guardians of national symbols on October 1 and protect the flag.
Beijing’s liaison office in the city also issued a statement on Monday, severely condemning the radicals for insulting the national flag and the unlawful violent acts over the weekend. It said such acts openly challenged the authority of the central government.
During their rampage in Sha Tin on Sunday, protesters snatched a Chinese flag from a pole outside the town hall and took it to the New Town Plaza shopping centre nearby, where it was stamped on and spray-painted. The flag ended up in the Shing Mun River.
A 21-year-old man arrested over the offence was charged on Monday at Tuen Mun Court with one count of desecrating the national flag. The same charge was laid against a 13-year-old girl arrested on Saturday for allegedly burning another national flag.
Since June, when the protests first broke out, police have handled nine cases of national flag desecration. Arrests were made in five cases, including an incident in Tsim Sha Tsui in August, when a flag was thrown into the harbour, and in Tung Chung in September, when a flag was burned.
Police arrested five people in Sha Tin and Tuen Mun over the weekend.
The increasingly violent and disruptive anti-government protests, against the now-withdrawn extradition bill, which would have allowed the transfer of criminal suspects to mainland China and other jurisdictions with which Hong Kong lacks an agreement, are now in their fourth month.
The government announced on Monday a series of celebration activities would be held on October 1 to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
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They include the launch of a reprogrammed nightly light display on the Victoria harbourfront as well as the release of special commemorative stamps.
Hundreds of Hong Kong dignitaries, including the city’s leader, are expected to attend a grand national celebration in Beijing on October 1.
Amid speculation that the People’s Liberation Army’s Hong Kong garrison might break with a popular tradition and not open its barracks to the public on October 1, the military did not respond to an inquiry by the Post.
While the protest movement is widely expected to escalate anti-government and anti-Beijing demonstrations to counter China’s birthday celebrations, online messages indicated a split on whether they should hold multiple rallies in several districts or stage a single mass gathering.
Jimmy Sham Tsz-kit of the Civil Human Rights Front said his organising group was waiting for police to approve its application for a march from Victoria Park in Causeway Bay to Chater Road in Central.
Meanwhile, in a statement on Monday, the Chinese foreign ministry’s commissioner in Hong Kong criticised US interference in the city’s affairs. It noted that US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Jim McGovern had threatened to introduce a Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act and invited activists Joshua Wong Chi-fung, Denise Ho Wan-sze and Sunny Cheung to testify at a hearing in Washington.
The act could pave the way for diplomatic action and economic sanctions against the city’s government.
The US politicians had “openly colluded with and manipulated the latter, and flagrantly meddled with Hong Kong affairs, which are China’s domestic affairs”, the statement said.
A spokesman for the commissioner’s office said the actions of the US politicians “provided the most solid evidence for the United States being the ‘black hand’ behind the scenes”.