Friday, March 29, 2024 | Ramadan 18, 1445 H
clear sky
weather
OMAN
25°C / 25°C
EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Fireworks mark Hong Kong anniversary

1048930
1048930
minus
plus

Hong Kong: Thousands attended an annual pro-democracy rally in Hong Kong on Saturday as President Xi Jinping ended his first visit since taking power in 2013 by warning that threats to the stability of China would not be tolerated.


Hong Kong was marking 20 years since its handover from Britain to China, where it has a degree of autonomy as special administrative region.


Protest organisers said some 60,000 people took to the streets in the sweltering heat, a significant decrease from last year when 110,000 turned out. Police put the turnout on Saturday at 14,500. The decline in participation reflected the fact that Hong Kong’s new Beijing-backed leader, Carrie Lam, had yet to make a political blunder, said Au Nok-hin, an organiser with the United Civil Rights Front, which put on the march.


Alvin Hung, a 27-year-old solicitor at the rally, had another theory.”Maybe this year people are starting to feel hopeless,” he said.


Lam was elected Hong Kong’s chief executive in March and sworn into office at a ceremony on Saturday in which Xi spoke. Xi, who had departed by the time the protest started, warned that there was a “red line” when it came to challenging China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong.


“Any attempt to endanger China’s sovereignty and security,challenge the power of the Central Government ... or use Hong Kong to carry out infiltration and sabotage activities against the mainland is an act that crosses the red line and is absolutely impermissible,”Xi said.


Xi said the “one country, two systems” policy that allows Hong Kongto retain its legal, governance and capitalist economic structures separate from those of mainland China was “advanced first and foremost to realize and uphold national unity.”


“It’s because we know it all too well. There’s a saying: familiarity breeds contempt.” The future of such open defiance and protests will be in question should the new government pass a controversial National Security law that would prevent treason, sedition and subversion against the Central People’s Government.


Lam’s term will be divisive as it is likely that Beijing will press her to pass the National Security law.


Earlier Saturday, more than 20 members of the political parties League of Social Democrats and Demosisto attempted to stage a protest near the exhibition centre where Xi was due to make his speech. They were taken away by police after a pro-Beijing group tried to confront the group that included activist Joshua Wong, but were later released.


Other protestors engaged in a scuffle with opponents who destroyed a wooden coffin that was to be used as a prop, according to images on social media.


Wong and other pro-democracy activists say China is in violation of the treaty that ceded Hong Kong to China by refusing to grant its residents the right to nominate and elect the Chief Executive. — dpa


SHARE ARTICLE
arrow up
home icon