“IF YOU don’t deal with the two cancer cells, you will harm the entire body.” So said a Chinese official, Zhang Xiaoming, when justifying his government’s decision to block two lawmakers who support Hong Kong’s independence from China from taking up their posts in the territory’s Legislative Council, or Legco. The move has angered many people in the territory. Hours before it was announced by the national legislature in Beijing, thousands of protesters in Hong Kong took to the streets; some of them scuffled with riot police. Not everyone sees separatism as a cancer.
The intervention by the National People’s Congress (NPC), as China’s parliament is known, is the first of its kind since Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997. The NPC has ruled before on constitutional matters in Hong Kong, but never before has it done so while judicial proceedings are under way in the territory on the same issue. On November 3rd a court in Hong Kong began hearing a case filed by the local government aimed at barring the two, Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching, from Legco. Rather than wait for a verdict, China has decided to step in right away....Continue reading
Source: China http://ift.tt/2fsYF20
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