The Hong Kong Legislative Council (LegCo) passed a law Thursday that could result in up to three years in prison for anyone found guilty of “disrespecting or misusing” the “March of the Volunteers,” the anthem of communist China.
Thursday is the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacres, in which Beijing murdered thousands of peaceful protesters seeking democracy. The Communist Party only admitted to the killings last year, the 30th anniversary of the event, and used the occasion to celebrate the use of deadly force on a crowd of unarmed students as “correct” policy.
Hong Kong’s Chinese-controlled government has been attempting to pass the bill for months, meeting fierce resistance from pro-democracy lawmakers and activists. Supporters insist the anthem is needed because protesters seeking to preserve autonomy from the Communist Party have refused to sing the anthem at public events or publicly booed it. Opponents insist that freedom of expression requires allowing Hongkongers the right not to express allegiance to the Party.
Under “One Country, Two Systems,” the policy that officially governs Hong Kong, China has sovereignty over Hong Kong and responsibility for its security against foreign threats. The policy nominally allows for Hong Kong to write its own laws on domestic issues, however, and maintain its decades-old tradition of respecting individual civil and political rights.
For the past year, Hong Kong residents have taken to the streets by the millions to protest a variety of measures by Beijing to undermine “One Country, Two Systems,” among them the national anthem law. Protests stalled temporarily during the height of the Chinese coronavirus outbreak, but returned with force in the past month. – READ MORE
Listen to the insightful Thomas Paine Podcast Below --