[Sunday’s march came before an expected decision on Monday by the National People’s Congress in China, with a goal of ensuring that two young people elected in September to Hong Kong’s 70-seat legislature never formally take office.]
By Amie Tsang, Alan Wong and
Michael Forsythe
 |
|
Thousands protested in
Hong Kong on Sunday against what they consider a legal
overreach by Beijing,
with some demonstrators clashing with the police. By
REUTERS and THE
ASSOCIATED PRESS on Publish Date November
6, 2016. Photo by Vincent
Yu/Associated Press... Watch in Times Video »
|
HONG
KONG — Thousands of
demonstrators took to the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday, clashing with the
police in a protest against an impending decision by China’s Parliament aimed
at eradicating a nascent independence movement in the territory.
In a scene that resembled the enormous
pro-democracy demonstrations of 2014, the police used pepper spray to push back
hundreds of protesters gathering after nightfall around the Chinese
government’s liaison office in the city.
Protesters defended themselves with
umbrellas, many of them yellow — the symbol of the 2014 Umbrella Movement — and
set up barricades across a major street.
Sunday’s march came before an expected
decision on Monday by the National People’s Congress in China, with a goal of
ensuring that two young people elected in September to Hong Kong’s 70-seat
legislature never formally take office.
The two, Yau Wai-ching, 25, and Sixtus Leung,
30, support independence for Hong Kong. Both inserted what many consider to be
a derogatory term for China into their oaths of office last month, and both
were told they must retake their oaths.
Their words incited fury in Beijing, which
has used its large internal police force to stamp out separatist movements in
places like Tibet and Xinjiang.
A commentator in the Communist Party’s
official People’s Daily newspaper called Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung’s actions a
“festering pustule” on Wednesday. On Saturday, the standing committee of the
National People’s Congress declared the two a threat to national security.
But in Hong Kong, unlike in Tibet and
Xinjiang, the power of China’s authoritarian government is constrained. Here,
civil liberties are guaranteed by the city’s mini-Constitution, known as the
Basic Law, and an international treaty that paved the way for Britain to hand
over sovereignty of the territory, a former colony, to China in 1997.
In a sign of how seriously it views the
situation with the lawmakers, China is taking the extraordinary step of
interpreting a clause in the Basic Law in such a way that is expected to make
it impossible for Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung to retake their oaths and formally
assume office.
A decision may come on Monday and would be
only the second time since 1997 that the National People’s Congress has
intervened in Hong Kong without being asked by the territory’s government or
its highest court.
Such an intervention into a sophisticated
legal system inherited from the British and based on hundred of years of legal
precedents has alarmed many people in Hong Kong.
China has the right to issue interpretations
of the Basic Law, but the Hong Kong Bar Association said on Wednesday that a
decision by Beijing would “deal a severe blow” to the judicial independence of
Hong Kong’s courts, which are adjudicating Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung’s case.
Many fear that the move will further
undermine the principle of “One Country, Two Systems” that has given the city
considerable autonomy.
Beijing’s impending move has galvanized the
large coalition of protesters who captured the world’s attention during their
79-day occupation of major thoroughfares in Hong Kong in late 2014. They fear
that the Communist Party will not only invalidate the elections of Ms. Yau and
Mr. Leung, but also move against other major figures of the protests who were
voted into office in September.
“When Hong Kong’s Basic Law can be changed at
the Communist Party’s will, what does that say about Hong Kong’s future?” said
Joshua Wong, 20, the most prominent leader of the 2014 protests.
“Today, it could disqualify the
pro-independence legislators,” he said, wearing a surgical mask and plastic
goggles as he stood in the middle of the demonstration. “Who would be next?”
As midnight approached in Hong Kong, hundreds
of protesters remained in a tense standoff with the police near China’s liaison
office. Officers stood in a row, armed with truncheons and shields. Some had
gas masks, igniting concerns that tear gas could be used. It was the use of
tear gas against the unarmed protesters in 2014 that helped set off that year’s
widespread protest movement.
After midnight, officers in riot gear began
clearing the area of protesters, some of whom were shouting, “Hong Kong
independence.”
The 2014 protests also followed a decision by
the National People’s Congress that generated outrage in Hong Kong. That year,
the Communist Party-controlled body set strict rules on planned elections for
Hong Kong’s top leader that effectively gave Beijing control over who could be
nominated for the office.
