Handover march | Hong Kong police make first arrests under new security law

Police detain a protester after being pepper sprayed during a protest in Causeway Bay before the annual handover march in Hong Kong

Hong Kong police made their first arrests yesterday under a new national security law imposed a day earlier by China’s central government, detaining ten people suspected of violating it during protests by thousands of people.
Police said one man with a Hong Kong independence flag was arrested at a protest in the city’s Causeway Bay shopping district. Police arrested another woman for holding up a sign displaying the British flag and calling for Hong Kong’s independence. Three other women were detained for possessing items advocating independence. Further details were not immediately available.
Hong Kong police said on Facebook that they arrested some 370 people on various charges, including unlawful assembly, possession of weapons and violating the national security law.
The arrests come as thousands took to the streets yesterday in an anti-government protest on the 23rd anniversary of Britain’s handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. For the first time, police banned this year’s annual march. Protesters shouted slogans, lambasted police and held up signs condemning the Chinese government and the new security law.
The law, imposed by China following last year’s anti-government protests in the semi-autonomous territory, makes secessionist, subversive, or terrorist activities illegal, as well as foreign intervention in the city’s internal affairs. Any person taking part in secessionist activities, such as shouting slogans or holding up banners and flags calling for the city’s independence, is violating the law regardless of whether violence is used.
The most serious offenders, such as those deemed to be masterminds behind the crimes, could receive a maximum punishment of life imprisonment. Lesser offenders could receive jail terms of up to three years, short-term detention or restriction.
Hong Kong’s leader strongly endorsed the new law in a speech marking yesterday’s 23rd anniversary of the handover of the territory — officially called the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region — from British colonial rule.
“The enactment of the national law is regarded as the most significant development in the relationship between the central authorities and the HKSAR since Hong Kong’s return to the motherland,” chief executive Carrie Lam said in a speech, following a flag-raising ceremony and the playing of China’s national anthem.
“It is also an essential and timely decision for restoring stability in Hong Kong,” she said.

Democrats: Law ends autonomy
A pro-democracy political party, The League of Social Democrats, organized a protest march during the flag-raising ceremony. About a dozen participants chanted slogans echoing demands from protesters last year for political reform and an investigation into accusations of police abuse.
The law’s passage Tuesday further blurs the distinction between the legal systems of Hong Kong, which maintained aspects of British law after the 1997 handover, and the mainland’s authoritarian Communist Party system. Critics say the law effectively ends the “one country, two systems” framework under which Hong Kong was promised a high degree of autonomy.
The law directly targets some of the actions of anti-government protesters last year, which included attacks on government offices and police stations, damage to subway stations and the shutdown of the city’s international airport. Acts of vandalism against government facilities or public transit can be prosecuted as subversion or terrorism, while anyone taking part in activities deemed secessionist would also be in violation of the law.
Pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo said in a news conference that the security legislation does not abide by the rule of law and is a dire warning to the free press.
“This would tell you that they want not just to get us, but to intimidate us into inaction, into a catatonic state,” Mo said.
Hong Kong’s police force said they would consider as illegal any flag or banner raised by protesters deemed to promote Hong Kong’s separation from China or express support for independence for Tibet, Xinjiang or the self-governing island democracy of Taiwan that China claims as its own.
Police will use a new purple flag to warn protesters if they display banners or shout slogans that may constitute a crime under the law.
Concerns have also been raised over the fate of key opposition figures, some of whom have already been charged for taking part in protests, as well as the disqualification of candidates for Legislative Council elections scheduled for September.

Beijing: People may criticize CCP
In Beijing, the executive deputy director of the Cabinet’s Hong Kong affairs office, Zhang Xiaoming, said Hong Kong people are allowed to criticize the ruling Communist Party but cannot turn those complaints “into actions.”
“What happened recently in Hong Kong has shown a deviation from the right track of the ‘one country, two systems’ (framework),” Zhang told reporters yesterday.
“To some extent, we made this law in order to correct the deviation … to pull it closer to ‘one-country.’”
Zhang also said that, “The law is a ‘sword of Damocles’ hanging above extremely few criminals who are severely endangering national security.”
Schools, social groups, media outlets, websites and others will be monitored and their national security awareness will be raised, according to the law, while the central government will have authority over the activities of foreign non-governmental organizations and media outlets in Hong Kong.
The law says central government bodies in Hong Kong will take over in “complicated cases” and when there is a serious threat to national security. Local authorities are barred from interfering with central government bodies operating in Hong Kong while they are carrying out their duties.
Security legislation was mandated under Hong Kong’s local constitution, but an earlier attempt to pass it in the city’s legislative body in 2003 was shelved because of massive public opposition. Beijing finally decided to circumvent the Hong Kong legislature and have the law passed Tuesday by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s rubber-stamp parliament.
President Xi Jinping signed a presidential order putting the law into effect, and it has been added to the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s constitution.
The law’s passage comes after Hong Kong’s legislature in early June approved a contentious bill making it illegal to insult the Chinese national anthem.
The law’s enactment deepened concerns abroad about Hong Kong’s future.

Reactions abroad
Britain’s foreign secretary told reporters yesterday that the law “is a clear and serious violation” of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the agreement that paved the way for the former British colony’s handover to Chinese rule.
Dominic Raab said officials have carefully assessed the law and he plans to set out details of what action the U.K. will take along with its international partners in response.
The U.S. is moving to end special trade terms given to the territory. The Trump administration has also said it will bar defense exports to Hong Kong and will soon require licenses for the sale of items that have both civilian and military uses.
The U.S. Congress has also moved to impose sanctions on people deemed connected to political repression in Hong Kong, including police officials, while Britain has said it could offer residency and possible citizenship to about 3 million of Hong Kong’s 7.5 million people.
China has said it will impose visa restrictions on Americans it sees as interfering over Hong Kong.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denounced the threat of a visa ban as a sign of “how Beijing refuses to take responsibility for its own choices” and said the law’s adoption “destroys the territory’s autonomy and one of China’s greatest achievements.”
Beijing’s “paranoia and fear of its own people’s aspirations have led it to eviscerate the very foundation of the territory’s success,” Pompeo said in a statement.

Taiwan opens HK migration office
Taiwan yesterday opened an office to facilitate migration from Hong Kong following China’s passage of a national security law for the former British colony seen as sharply restricting political opposition and freedom of speech.
Taiwan is a self-governing democracy claimed by China as its own territory and has firmly rejected Beijing’s demand that it unify with the mainland under the “one country, two systems” framework in place in Hong Kong.
At a ribbon-cutting ceremony, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council minister, Chen Ming-tong, said the office would assist Hong Kong professionals seeking to move to the island for a range of purposes, including education and business.
The establishment of the office is “not only a statement on Taiwan’s support to Hong Kong’s democracy and freedom, but also highlights our determination to care for Hong Kong people,” Chen told reporters.
Chen said the law’s implementation effectively terminates China’s promise to allow Hong Kong to retain its separate legal, economic and civil rights promised to it for 50 years beginning from the 1997 return to Chinese rule. MDT/AP