Demosisto via AFPHong Kong police manhandled and arrested protesters after building a security “fortress” around a visiting Chinese official, pan-democratic politicians said on Tuesday.
At least seven people were arrested as members of the pan-democratic League of Social Democrats (LSD) tried to approach Zhang Dejiang, head of China’s legislature, to tell him their opinions, LSD lawmaker Leung Kwok-hung said.
Meanwhile, across the harbor in Kowloon, fellow LSD members hung a huge yellow banner from Beacon Hill , which read: “We want true universal suffrage,” echoing a previous banner hung on adjacent Lion Rock during the 2014 Occupy Central pro-democracy movement in the city. Approaches to Lion Rock were under police guard onTuesday.
“Seven of our members were arrested,” Leung told RFA.
He called on Hong Kong people to wear yellow, the color of the pro-democracy movement that occupied key districts of the city from October to December, 2014, as a form of silent protest during Zhang’s trip.
Citing fears of a potential terrorist attack, police set up a “security fortress” around the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wanchai where Zhang will stay during his three-day trip, government broadcaster RTHK reported.
“The fortress comprises two-meter high water barricades, metal barricades as well as no-go zones for the public,” the station said, adding that police were unable to specify a legal justification for cordoning off such large parts of the city.
‘Total security lock down’
Leung dismissed fears of a terrorist attack, saying the tight security was a violation of people’s rights as citizens.
“Every time [a Chinese official comes here] we have these kinds of protests, but it is only this time that we have had this total security lock down,” he said.
“Basically, they want to make sure that nobody gets to say anything to Zhang’s face, whether it be through protests and demonstrations or whatever,” he told RFA.
“They are using police powers to suppress our human rights. When some young people went over to the cordon to check it out, the police pinned them to the ground, while somebody else was arrested for … hanging up a banner.”
Meanwhile, former Occupy Central student leader Nathan Law said he was wrestled to the ground after he and a group of fellow activists tried to approach the area to tell Zhang their opinions.
“When we stepped out of the hotel to this red carpet where we are standing now, they pulled me down,” Law told reporters after the scuffle. “There were 8-10 police officers to each protester.”
“So we didn’t get the chance to express our demands directly to Zhang Dejiang,” he said.
Zhang is the chairman of the National People’s Congress standing committee, the body that decreed on Aug. 31, 2014 that candidates in 2017 elections for Hong Kong’s next chief executive would have to be vetted by a Beijing-backed committee.
The decree, which was rejected by pan-democratic campaigners as “fake universal suffrage,” sparked a week-long student class boycott in September that culminated with the occupation of the central business district by thousands of protesters.
On Sept. 28, hundreds of thousands of people poured onto the streets in protest at the use of tear-gas and pepper spray by riot police against the occupiers, who remained in smaller numbers until early December at three locations in the city.
Remove Beijing’s man
Beijing’s electoral reform plan was defeated in June 2015 in the city’s Legislative Council (LegCo), and the next chief executive will be picked, as before, by a Beijing-backed election committee.
Pan-democrats have vowed to call for the reinstatement of political reforms and the removal of chief executive Leung Chun-ying when they meet with Zhang at a cocktail reception on Wednesday.
Democratic Party lawmaker Emily Lau said politicians will also raise concerns about the disappearance of five Hong Kong booksellers, particularly the case of Lee Bo, who was taken across the internal immigration border in opaque circumstances last year after planning to publish a book on Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“Of course we will bring up the Lee Bo incident,” Lau told RFA. “People have been calling me saying they don’t mind whether they have universal suffrage or not, but that the Lee Bo incident has really frightened them.”
“If the central government sent its agents to arrest people in Hong Kong, [Zhang] would need to know about it.”
Zhang was met by chief executive Leung Chun-ying and a brass band at Hong Kong’s International Airport onTuesday, and pledged immediately to listen to its people.
“[I will listen to] people from all walks of life about any suggestions and demands regarding the implementation of ‘one country two systems’,” Zhang said, in a reference to the high degree of autonomy promised to Hong Kong under the terms of its 1997 handover accord with its former colonial ruler, Britain.
He also said he would listen to “any suggestions and requests regarding the nation and Hong Kong’s development.”
Eddie Choi, senior politics lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said Zhang’s promise may mean little in practice, however.
“Of course people here hope he will listen, but nobody knows how much he will actually listen, or see [while he’s here],” Choi said.
“We don’t want him just to reiterate central government policy; we want him to pay genuine heed to the voices of local people.”
Zhang’s trip comes as the U.S. and U.K. governments have sounded alarm bells about the apparent cross-border arrest of Lee Bo, and the detention of four of his colleagues, one of them a Swedish national detained in Thailand.
In a May 11 report, the State Department said Lee’s unofficial departure from Hong Kong had raised serious concerns, and appeared to be “the most significant breach” of the handover agreement since 1997.
Under the terms of the handover and the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, China has promised to allow Hong Kong to continue with its existing way of life until 2047.
But journalists and political analysts cite growing evidence of self-censorship in the city’s once freewheeling media and publishing industries, as well as apparent political interference in the running of the its universities.
Hong Kong officials warned last month that free speech has “limits” despite constitutional protections, and that the city’s police would consider investigating members of political groups advocating independence for the city.
Reported by Lam Kwok-lap and Wen Yuqing for RFA’s Cantonese Service, and by Xin Lin for the Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
