Hong Kong independence activist Andy Chan (陳浩天) yesterday attacked China as an empire trying to “annex” and “destroy” the territory in a no-holds barred speech at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, which Beijing wanted cancelled.
Chan, who leads the tiny Hong Kong National Party, said Beijing was semi-autonomous Hong Kong’s “colonial master.”
“We are a nation that is quickly being annexed and destroyed by China,” Chan told a packed audience.
Photo: AFP
He said he had been under increased “surveillance” by groups of people that he did not know, who had been following him and knocking on his family’s door to take pictures of them in the lead-up to the speech.
Hong Kong enjoys freedom of speech and assembly unseen on the mainland under a handover agreement between Britain and China, but Beijing has become increasingly intolerant of any mention of independence for Hong Kong as Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) emphasizes territorial integrity as key to China’s resurgence.
Rival protesters gathered outside the FCC, with pro-independence activists clashing with police, saying they had been given no space for their rally, while dozens of pro-Beijing supporters chanted slogans including “Gas the spies!”
The lunch address — titled Hong Kong Nationalism: A Politically Incorrect Guide to Hong Kong under Chinese Rule — drew objections from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs ministry and Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥), as fears grow that freedom of speech in the territory is increasingly under attack.
The club stood by its decision to go ahead with the event, saying that the views of different sides in any debate must be heard.
Chan called on Britain and the US to help Hong Kong, and said Taiwan was an inspiration for his party as it had gone from a dictatorship to a democracy.
The Hong Kong government yesterday said that advocating independence contravened the territory’s Basic Law.
“It is totally inappropriate and unacceptable for any person to openly promote and advocate the independence of Hong Kong,” a spokesman said. “As such, it is inappropriate and unacceptable for any organization to provide a public platform to espouse such views.”
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
‘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
Seven wild Asiatic elephants were killed and a calf was injured when a high-speed passenger train collided with a herd crossing the tracks in India’s northeastern state of Assam early yesterday, local authorities said. The train driver spotted the herd of about 100 elephants and used the emergency brakes, but the train still hit some of the animals, Indian Railways spokesman Kapinjal Kishore Sharma told reporters. Five train coaches and the engine derailed following the impact, but there were no human casualties, Sharma said. Veterinarians carried out autopsies on the dead elephants, which were to be buried later in the day. The accident site
‘EAST SHIELD’: State-run Belma said it would produce up to 6 million mines to lay along Poland’s 800km eastern border, and sell excess to nations bordering Russia and Belarus Poland has decided to start producing anti-personnel mines for the first time since the Cold War, and plans to deploy them along its eastern border and might export them to Ukraine, the deputy defense minister said. Joining a broader regional shift that has seen almost all European countries bordering Russia, with the exception of Norway, announce plans to quit the global treaty banning such weapons, Poland wants to use anti-personnel mines to beef up its borders with Belarus and Russia. “We are interested in large quantities as soon as possible,” Deputy Minister of National Defense Pawel Zalewski said. The mines would be part
RSS