By Tenzin Dharpo
DHARAMSHALA, May 18: The visit of a Chinese leader Tuesday to Hong Kong was met with protests and “acts of resistance” from pro-democratic supporters and activists. An elderly Hong Kong couple and an unidentified woman raised the Tibetan national flag proposing need for “self determination” for Tibet.
Prominent Chinese leader Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee and the chief of the Hong Kong and Macau affairs office was to speak at a conference on the much touted ‘One belt, one road project’.
Despite heavy deployment of police personnel (around 6000) and tight security, protestors managed to unfurl banners that read, “I want genuine universal suffrage” and “an end to Chinese communist one-party rule”. Any object of yellow color (synonymous with the 2014 protests dubbed the umbrella revolution) is being confiscated as a tool for protest at the city’s airport, near the hotel where Zhang is put up and the venue of the convention center. One tweet expressive of the development read, “Yellow umbrellas and familiar faces. As we found out at the airport today, the CCP now fear this colour.”
An elderly couple, Uncle Wong and Mrs. Wong who are key figures during the umbrella movement two years ago displayed the Tibetan national flag proposing the right to self determination for Tibet as well as Hong Kong. He reportedly said, “Hong Kongers need self determination. Tibet people need self determination, too,” according to Chinese dissident and journalist/Activist Rose Tang.
A video of an unidentified woman raising the Tibetan flag is also being circulated in social networking sites and micro-messaging apps. The lady who is struggling to raise the flag amid a swarm of police is supported by onlookers shouting slogans. “An unidentified woman holding a Tibetan flag is mobbed by a dozen police officers who try to grab the flag from her. The male voice in the video: ‘I have my rights to protest.’ The female voice: ‘Down with the Communist Party!’, It’s not known if she has been arrested,” Rose Tang’s wrote on Facebook.
The ongoing protests could blow out like the 2014 protests if Zhang, also known as the No.3 leader (after President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang), endorses the current pro-Beijing Chief Executive CY Leung who is unpopular in Hong Kong, for another term, observers say.
