BEIJING, 14 Oct 2019:
China’s president warned those involved in separatist activities in China would end up crushed and broken, according to the state-owned People’s Daily newspaper today.
“Anyone attempting separatist activities in any part of China will end up with crushed bodies and shattered bones. And any external force backing such attempts will be deemed by the Chinese people as pipe-dreaming,” Xi Jinping said during a state visit to Nepal during the weekend.
Xi’s statements came as the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong reached their 19th week. Beijing claims the uprising has been driven by foreign forces and singled out Washington on several occasions for allegedly driving the unrest.
In this regard, the Chinese president thanked Nepal for its strong adherence to the One-China policy, which rejects Taiwan and Hong Kong as independent entities.
The Hong Kong protests, which have been drawing massive crowds since June following a controversial extradition bill, have mutated into a movement that seeks to improve the democratic mechanisms that govern Hong Kong and safeguard – or expand – the region’s partial autonomy from Beijing.
However, some demonstrators have opted for more radical tactics than peaceful civil disobedience and violent clashes with the police have been frequent.
Chaos and violence descended on at least a dozen districts in Hong Kong yesterday, as anti-government activists staged flash mob protests, vandalised selected shops and clashed with police – in familiar scenes that have played out in the territory over the past weeks.
Defying a newly introduced ban on face masks in protests, various groups of protesters put on a mask and gathered at shopping malls in different districts in the afternoon, responding to calls from anti-government netizens via a popular online forum.
The gatherings soon devolved into chaos, with some protesters resorting to familiar tactics such as throwing bricks at police vehicles and vandalising shops with business ties to mainland China or deemed pro-government, including Huawei, Bank of China and Starbucks, whose franchisee is a Beijing-friendly restaurant operator.
A group of protesters vandalised a government building in the suburb of Tuen Mun. Describing the demonstrators as “rioters”, police noted in a statement that some protesters hurled objects into the rail track of a metro station in the afternoon.
By 3.30pm local time, police had made multiple arrests of young people dressed in black – a dress code of protesters in the on-going anti-government protest movement, which has stretched into its 19th consecutive week and plunged Hong Kong into its most severe political crisis in decades.
At around 4.30pm, teargas was fired in the residential areas of Sha Tin and Tsuen Wan.
Meanwhile, police have unexpectedly approved a rally today – organised by pro-democracy activists to call for the passage of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, a congressional bill proposed by US lawmakers that would punish figures in suspected of suppressing human rights in Hong Kong.
It will be the first public assembly approved by Hong Kong police since the authorities made the controversial move to invoke an emergency law to impose the anti-mask ban as a way to stifle the protest movement.
– EPE