Police confirm investigation into netizens mocking China flag

The Judiciary Police (PJ) confirmed yesterday that it is investigating the case of several netizens who photoshopped China’s national flag upside-down onto photographs of Macau and shared the images on social media.

On Monday morning, a Chinese national flag at the Macau Outer Harbor Ferry Terminal was hoisted and displayed upside-down by a staff member of the Macau Customs Service. According to public broadcaster TDM, the national flag was raised upside-down around 7 a.m. and was not rectified until midday.

Photographs of the mistakenly-hoisted flag were shared online, prompting some netizens to mock the incident by doctoring other pictures of the city to include the blunder.

Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak, who described the photoshopped images as unacceptable and an insult to the nation, said on Tuesday that the ferry terminal was the only location in which the flag was incorrectly displayed. He said he had instructed the PJ to investigate those netizens responsible for creating and posting the digitally-altered content online.

It is not yet clear how many people in Macau are currently under investigation. The Times contacted the Judiciary Police and the Office of the Secretary for Security yesterday, but neither agreed to confirm the number of suspects in the investigation.

Mocking the national flag is a punishable offence under Macau Law and is taken seriously by local and central authorities.

According to Annex III of Macau’s Basic Law, the Law of the National Flag of the People’s Republic of China has been in force in the MSAR since the handover.

The law states that all citizens and organizations are required to show respect to the national flag, and it cannot be displayed in a “damaged, defiled, faded or substandard” condition.

Article 19 of the law states: “Whoever desecrates the National Flag of the People’s Republic of China by publicly and wilfully burning, mutilating, scrawling on, defiling or trampling upon it shall be investigated for criminal responsibilities according to law.”

“The Law of the National Flag is one of a few appended to the Macau Basic Law and it states that insults to this law are to be punished in accordance with the Macau Penal Code,” Francisco Leitão, a partner at local law firm MdME Lawyers, told the Times yesterday. “In the grand scheme of the Penal Code, this is not a very serious offence; it in fact carries one of the lighter punishments.”

Nevertheless, Macau Law No.5/1999 states that if judicial authorities interpret the act of “damaging” a flag as “insulting the national symbol”, lawbreakers can be sentenced to imprisonment of up to three years.

“This can be a bit ambiguous in terms of interpretation,” said Leitão. “It depends whether these photoshopped images are seen as an insult to a national symbol, or whether they can constitute ‘damage’ as outlined in the law.”

The lawyer added that sharing the original ferry terminal photograph would probably not constitute an offence, providing it was propagated as a factual report of what had occurred and was not accompanied by a message that could be construed as offensive.

In addition to constituting a criminal offence, Secretary Wong also said that sharing the fabricated images was an insult to the work of the Customs Service.

In a statement earlier this week, the government department apologized for the mistake and admitted that it was due to the “negligence” of its staff members responsible for oversight at the ferry terminal. It said that a disciplinary process has been opened and a report will be compiled on the incident shortly.

Chinese authorities are highly sensitive to any perceived slight against the country’s integrity.

Mainland legislators are currently reviewing a new national anthem law that would allow the detention for up to 15 days of anyone who maliciously distorts the anthem in a disrespectful manner.

Annex III of Macau’s Basic Law would cover the new law and Secretary for Justice and Administration Sonia Chan has already insisted that, if approved on the mainland, the new rules would be mandatorily implemented in the MSAR. “The national flag, the national symbol, and the national anthems are our country’s dignity,” the secretary said last week.

In another instance of Chinese sensitivity, last year, newly-elected Hong Kong lawmakers Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching were disqualified from taking up their legislative seats because of their disingenuous loyalty pledges to Beijing.

Their disqualification was sanctioned by a mainland interpretation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, which decreed that an oath not taken in earnest is equivalent to declining to take one at all. Without having taken the oath – and with a request to retake it denied – Leung and Yau were prevented from becoming legislators.

In this context, the MSAR has moved to pre-empt any electoral troubles by applying Beijing’s interpretation to the Macau Legislative Assembly election in September. The Legislative Assembly Electoral Affairs Committee, responsible for regulating the election, has been empowered to interpret whether an oath taken by a prospective Macau legislator is sincere or not.