China’s top official in Hong Kong made a rare appeal for pro-democracy protests to remain peaceful as a politician close to the central government warned it would send in troops if the demonstrations get out of hand, a report said yesterday. The remarks were made after thousands of people took to the streets on New Year’s Day to call for universal suffrage and for the release of jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波).
The march was largely peaceful until scuffles broke out as around 100 activists were confronted by scores of police outside the Central Government Liaison Office, the body responsible for the city’s ties with Beijing.
The group chanted slogans, banged drums, and tried to break through a police barricade. Peng Qinghua (彭清華), director of the office, warned that “radical” demonstrations would not be tolerated, the South China Morning Post said.
“While we respect citizens’ expression of various views and demands, we hope these expressions can take place in a rational and peaceful atmosphere,” Peng, who rarely comments in public, was quoted as saying in the report.
“If some actions which are too radical arise in the process, this is against the expectation of citizens,” he said. “We hope in the future, rational discussion can be conducted on major political, economic and livelihood issues in Hong Kong.”
Beijing loyalist and Hong Kong executive council member Cheng Yiu-tong (鄭耀棠) said the scuffle had shocked the central government.
“If the majority of people are like that, Beijing will have to send troops here,” the paper reported Cheng as saying. “The status of the central government’s liaison office in Hong Kong is like an embassy of the Foreign Ministry. You clashed with the office in this manner, this was very shocking to Beijing.”
Hong Kong’s pro-democracy politicians have campaigned for universal suffrage to be introduced in 2012. Beijing has insisted that a vote “may be implemented for the Chief Executive in 2017 and the Legislative Council in 2020.”
Hong Kong, with a population of 7 million, was returned to China from British rule in 1997. It has a separate Constitution guaranteeing freedoms not available to Chinese on the mainland, including the right to protest.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS