Hong Kong will not welcome any visitors who are looking to “damage the solemnity of the Olympics,” the government said in a report, raising fresh concerns it was clamping down on free speech.
“As a cohost city of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Hong Kong has the obligation to ensure that the relevant Olympic activities will proceed in a safe, peaceful and smooth manner,” the department said in a report to legislators released on Tuesday.
“The government does not welcome it if any person seeks to damage the solemnity of the Olympics or disrupt the smooth proceeding of the relevant Olympic activities in Hong Kong,” the report said.
Hong Kong will host the equestrian events.
“Immigration control and public order must be strengthened especially when major events are taking place in the region,” the report said.
At least 13 people — including known members of activist groups — were prevented from entering Hong Kong ahead of the torch relay’s journey through the territory last Friday. However, US actress and activist Mia Farrow was allowed in despite her vehement criticism of China’s backing of the Sudan government, accused of prolonged rights abuses.
Legislator Cheung Man-kwong (張文光), a pro-democracy activist, said failure to explain the entry bans had damaged Hong Kong’s reputation.
“The government’s silence is a shield to hide the fact that such measures have damaged the ‘one country, two systems’ [arrangement],” he said, according to a report in the South China Morning Post yesterday.
ANTHROPOLOGISTS
Meanwhile, a major academic conference in Kunming in July has been postponed amid a slew of official measures to avoid possible disruptions ahead of the Olympics.
Conference organizers yesterday refused to give a precise reason for the rescheduling of the world congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, scheduled for mid-July.
They said they hoped it could be held in late November or early December instead.
”We have postponed the July conference, but I am not at liberty to tell you the reason why,” said Zhang Jijiao, one of the event’s organizers and a sociology professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.
Zhang said 6,354 people had registered to attend the congress.
Union secretary-general Peter Nas said a postponement would be a major disruption and that he was trying to persuade organizers to keep the original dates.
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
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‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
Czech officials have confirmed that Chinese agents surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March 2024 and planned a collision with her car as part of an “unprecedented” provocation by Beijing in Europe. Czech Military Intelligence learned that their Chinese counterparts attempted to create conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, which “did not go beyond the preparation stage,” agency director Petr Bartovsky told Czech Radio in a report yesterday. In addition, a Chinese diplomat ran a red light to maintain surveillance of the Taiwanese
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