Five organizers of a massive pro-democracy rally in Hong Kong were charged by police yesterday with a range of minor offences, as pressure builds on Chinese Communist Party rulers in Beijing to introduce political reforms in the former British colony.
The pro-democracy march on Tuesday, which organizers said attracted more than half a million people, and a subsequent sit-in by mainly student groups rank among the biggest challenges yet to China since the July 1, 1997, handover.
Police said the charges brought against the organizers included failure to comply with instructions from a police officer, obstructing officers performing their duties, leaving a running vehicle and providing false information to an officer. Police did not name those charged.
Photo: AFP
“This is political persecution,” Civil Human Rights Front vice convenor Icarus Wong (王浩賢) said. “Five-hundred ten-thousand people marched ... the government’s response is to arrest the organizers.”
Wong said police arrested Civil Human Rights Front convenor Johnson Yeung (楊政賢), the group’s treasurer, a driver, and two volunteer workers.
Wong said one charge — that of providing false information — brought against one of the organizers was for giving police the incorrect number for a street address, though the correct street name was provided.
The July 1 march is an annual event that marks Hong Kong’s return to China as a special administrative region under a “one country, two systems” policy that gives it wide-ranging autonomy and a separate legal system.
This year, however, the march followed an unofficial referendum on democracy in which nearly 800,000 voted, and led to an overnight sit-in in Hong Kong’s Central business district. Police arrested more than 500 people early on Wednesday after they sat down and refused to leave.
Tensions escalated again on Thursday when lawmakers pelted Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying (梁振英) with objects during a Legislative Council meeting, and shouted for democratic reforms.
Meanwhile, China’s top newspaper yesterday dismissed fears that the territory’s autonomy was being eroded, saying Beijing’s policy had not and would not change.
In a front page commentary, the People’s Daily said the white paper Beijing published last month was proof that China was committed to Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy.
“Some people think that the white paper deviated from the basic policy the center [of the party] first proposed, and others worry about whether the center will squeeze Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy,” it wrote. “This is all totally baseless.”
Critics of the white paper say its assertion of China’s “comprehensive jurisdiction” over Hong Kong, as well as its requirement that the territory’s “administrators,” including judges, be patriotic, are violations of the Basic Law and the agreement that China signed with Britain which paved the way for the handover.
The newspaper admitted that in the 1980s, when Beijing came up with its proposals for Hong Kong, some people in the territory feared China’s changing its position.
But since former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) promised the high degree of autonomy and it was written into Hong Kong’s Basic Law, country’s leaders have never veered from this course, it said.
“Experience proves the center keeps its promises, and the center’s basic policy toward Hong Kong is completely correct,” it said.
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