Riot police were deployed across Hong Kong on Thursday as lawmakers debated a bill that would criminalise disrespect of China's national anthem, and as the United States piled pressure on China to preserve the city's freedoms.
HONG KONG - Riot police were deployed across Hong Kong on Thursday as lawmakers debated a bill that would criminalise disrespect of China’s national anthem, and as the United States piled pressure on China to preserve the city’s freedoms.
Police fired pepper pellets and made 360 arrests on Wednesday as thousands of people took to the streets in anger over the anthem bill and national security legislation proposed by China that has raised international alarm over freedoms in the city. China’s plan to impose the new legislation was “only the latest in a series of actions that fundamentally undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedoms”, he told Congress.
It could see Chinese intelligence agencies set up bases in the city that was supposed to have a high degree of autonomy under the terms of its 1997 handover to China by former colonial power Britain. The U.S. mission to the United Nations said the issue was “a matter of urgent global concern that implicates international peace and security”. China said the legislation was an internal matter for China.Tensions between Beijing and Washington had already been rising over China’s militarisation of the South China Sea, trade and the coronavirus pandemic.
“Sanction is painful but necessary,” Agnes Chow from Hong Kong’s pro-democracy group Demosisto said at a news conference.
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