Hong Kong officials yesterday apologized to Muslim leaders after riot police on Sunday sprayed a mosque and bystanders with a water cannon loaded with a blue liquid while trying to contain pro-democracy demonstrations.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) and the police chief visited the Kowloon Masjid and Islamic Centre to apologize to the chief imam and Muslim community leaders.
Officials were scrambling to minimize the fallout from the incident at one of the territory’s most well-known religious sites.
Photo: AFP
The government said in a statement that Lam “extended an apology for the inadvertent spraying.”
Authorities called it an accident, but a bystander’s account disputed that.
Muslim leaders told reporters they accepted the apology.
Photo: Bloomberg
“Our mosque is not damaged, nothing is done wrong. Only thing is that they should have not done it. For that they apologized so we accept it,” said Saeed Uddin, honorary secretary of the Islamic Community Fund of Hong Kong.
Police also apologized later at a daily news briefing and said they had been contacting Muslim community leaders.
“To any people or any groups that were affected, we offer our genuine apologies,” Kowloon West regional commander Cheuk Hau-yip (卓孝業) said. “We certainly do not have any malicious intent.”
It was a rare case of authorities apologizing for how they have handled the protest movement, which erupted in early June and expanded to include demands for police accountability and political reforms.
Protesters seized on it as the latest example of what they call unnecessarily harsh police tactics.
During Sunday’s protest, a police water cannon truck that was passing by the mosque sprayed a stinging blue-dyed liquid at a handful of people standing in front of the mosque’s gate, according to video of the incident by pro-democracy Hong Kong Legislator Jeremy Tam (譚文豪).
The mosque’s front steps, metal gate and the sidewalk outside were stained with the blue liquid while people caught in the plume were left gagging, coughing and trying to rinse the solution from their eyes, the video shows.
Volunteers later arrived to help clean up the mosque, and by yesterday morning the blue coating was largely gone.
Mohan Chugani, a businessman and former president of Hong Kong’s Indian Association, said he was passing by the mosque and stopped to chat with someone when he was hit by the cannon.
Chugani, who is not Muslim, said there were no protesters around when the water cannon and an armored car rolled up, so he thought nothing of it.
Then he noticed a periscope on the cannon focusing on him and before he knew it, the cannon fired.
“I was shocked,” Chugani, 73, said. “The second round became much more powerful. I couldn’t open my eyes, and it was like my whole body was on fire.”
Chugani, whose left eye remained swollen shut, said officials reached out to apologize.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique