Hong Kong police on Thursday arrested democracy activist Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) for participating in an unauthorized assembly in October last year and breaching the territory’s anti-mask law, according to a post on his official Twitter account.
Wong’s latest arrest adds to several unlawful assembly charges or suspected offenses he and other activists are facing related to last year’s pro-democracy protests, which prompted Beijing to impose a sweeping National Security Law on June 30.
Hong Kong police confirmed they arrested two men, aged 23 and 74, on Thursday for illegal assembly on Oct. 5 last year.
Photo: Bloomberg
Britain, which administered Hong Kong until a 1997 handover to China whose terms were agreed in a Joint Declaration between London and Beijing, expressed concern over Wong’s arrest.
“I am deeply concerned about the arrest of Joshua Wong, another example of HK authorities targeting activists,” British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Dominic Raab said in a tweet.
“Chinese and HK authorities must respect the rights and freedoms of the people of Hong Kong, as protected in the Joint Declaration,” he said.
The arrest of Wong, 23, comes about six weeks after media tycoon Jimmy Lai (黎智英) was detained on suspicion of colluding with foreign forces.
Wong had been a frequent visitor to Washington where he appealed to the US Congress to support Hong Kong’s democracy movement and counter Beijing’s tightening grip over the global financial hub.
His visits drew the wrath of Beijing, which says he is a “black hand” of foreign forces.
Wong disbanded his pro-
democracy group Demosisto in June, just hours after China’s parliament passed the National Security Law for Hong Kong, bypassing the territory’s local legislature, a move widely criticized by Western governments.
His long-time colleague Agnes Chow (周庭), 21, and two other activists were among 10 people police arrested last month on suspicion of violating the new law.
The new law punishes anything China considers as subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, with up to life in prison.
Wong was just 17 years old when he became the face of the 2014 student-led “Umbrella movement” democracy protests, but he was not a leading figure of the often violent unrest that shook the territory last year.
An anti-mask law was introduced last year in a bid to help police identify the protesters they suspected of committing crimes and it is facing a challenge in court.
In the meantime, the Hong Kong government has made masks mandatory in most circumstances due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
French authorities yesterday said that they would close a Paris mosque as part of a clampdown on radical Islam that has yielded over a dozen arrests following the beheading of a teacher who had shown his pupils a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed. The mosque in a densely populated suburb northeast of Paris had disseminated a video on its Facebook page days before Friday’s gruesome murder, railing against teacher Samuel Paty’s choice of material for a class discussion on freedom of expression, a source close to the investigation said. The French Ministry of the Interior said the mosque in Pantin, which has
LONGSTANDING NEUTRALITY: The US request came as it vied for influence in Southeast Asia with China, but Indonesia has never let foreign militaries operate there Indonesia this year rejected a proposal by the US to allow its P-8 Poseidon maritime surveillance planes to land and refuel there, four senior Indonesian officials familiar with the matter have said. US officials made multiple “high-level” approaches in July and August to Indonesia’s defense and foreign ministers before Indonesian President Joko Widodo rebuffed the request, the officials said. Representatives for Indonesia’s president and defense minister, the US Department of State’s Office of Press Relations and the US embassy in Jakarta did not respond to requests for comment. Representatives for the US Department of Defense and Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs Retno Marsudi
COVID-19 UNDER CONTROL: The two prime ministers agreed to ease entry bans, and allow short-term business visits and reopen flights between Vietnam and Japan Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, in his first overseas summit since taking office last month, yesterday agreed with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to step up defense and security cooperation in the face of China’s expanding influence in the region. In talks in Hanoi, Suga and Phuc set up a basic agreement allowing Japan to export defense equipment and technology to Vietnam. Japan has been pursuing such agreements to bolster ties with Southeast Asian nations and sustain its own defense industry. Suga said that his four-day trip to Vietnam and Indonesia would be key to pursuing the “free and open Indo-Pacific” vision
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday night said that he has no problem with being held responsible for the many killings under his crackdown on drugs, and that he is ready to face charges that could land him in jail, but not charges of crimes against humanity. Duterte’s televised remarks were among his clearest acknowledgement of the prospects that he could face a deluge of criminal charges for the bloody campaign he launched after taking office in the middle of 2016. Police have reported that at least 5,856 drug suspects have been killed in raids and more than 256,000 others arrested since
RSS