Macau taxi driver says he won’t take HK ‘independence dogs’

These stills taken from video show the Macau taxi with signs attached to both front seats of the vehicle

A taxi driver in Macau has put up signs inside his vehicle expressing negative sentiments towards some Hong Kong protesters, calling them “independence dogs”.

According to a post on Weibo, a Macau taxi driver put up signs behind the driver’s and front passenger’s seat with the words “Hong Kong independence dogs not welcome.”

The social media post contains a video clip of the situation, showing the taxi making a turn in the NAPE area.

It is illegal in Macau for a taxi driver to refuse to serve a passenger, even though such infractions have until late been a regular occurrence across the city, attracting the ire of residents and tourists alike.

The new taxi law, which entered into force on June 3 with harsher penalties for several infractions, has led to a steep decline in the number of reported cases. According to official data, the number of cases of taxi drivers refusing to transport passengers fell from 121 in May to just 21 in June.

The post, which is connected to the Weibo account “Beijing people defend Beijing town”, received 468 likes and 109 comments.

One of the comments read, “I got to meet quite a few Macau people due to my work. I heard from them that Macau and Hong Kong are different. The majority of Macau people are pro-communist party and support the handover. Maybe it was because Portugal was indeed incomparable to the U.K.”

Another comment wrote “it only [works] if Hong Kong taxis have it.”

“He wrote it on purpose to cheat mainlanders” a third Weibo user, named Cai Fan Yu, suggested.

According to the original nine second video clip found on Weibo and posted by Sha Shi Sha Shi, the passenger who took the video is a man speaking Mandarin with a northeastern accent. The original video has been viewed 1.34 million times.

“Macau also has opposers, but not that many, and [they] cannot form a strong force,” Wang Xiao Er Yun Cheng wrote on the post.

“I have been to Macau twice, and two taxi drivers used ‘our China’,” Maggie 22738 wrote, indicating that the Macau taxi drivers she had encountered had a sense of belonging to China.

Categories Headlines Macau