The tension did not cease in Hong Kong, on the eve of the head of their self-Government, Carrie Lam, visit this week to Beijing to listen to the plans that the central Government has to the former british colony. At least six people have been injured this Sunday in a shopping centre when a man, according to local media spoke in mandarin —the language of the mainland China—, it was directed towards protesters, pro-democracy on the outside of the enclosure, began to discuss with a family and began to death.
Among the wounded in the shopping centre Citiplaza in Tai Koo —a zone of upper-middle-class where there had been no incidents of importance in the nearly five months of protests— is the legislator of the opposition pandemócrata Andrew Chiu, to which the attacker tore off part of the left ear to a bite.
In statements to the newspaper South China Morning Post, one of the victims, a woman, claimed that his sister, his brother-in-law and she came out of dinner at the mall when it broke out a discussion with the attacker. The man, middle-age and identity still unknown, he pulled out the knife that he carried in a bag and began to inflict stab wounds to the brother-in-law.
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The attacker was immobilized and heavily beaten by the crowd of protesters before that the police will take you arrested. The agents dispersed, the agglomeration around the mall with rounds of tear gas, something that has become almost a ritual after 22 weeks of protests.
This Sunday, there were several clashes between Police and participants in the protests, after a number of rallies are not allowed. On Saturday, in a violent day, the demonstrations ended up with close to 200 detained; the police seized 188 molotov cocktails.
The protests this weekend were produced after that, on Friday, the chinese Government communicated that it is preparing new measures to try to head off the protests, which began as a mass mobilization against a draft law on extradition, and have evolved to a movement to criticize China and to demand universal suffrage.
Among the measures that Beijing prepares is the introduction of “patriotic education,” aimed especially at young people, and the officials of self-Government. Also “will improve the system and mechanism of appointment of the head of the local Government and senior officials”, as explained by a senior parliamentarian, Shen Chunyao, at a press conference in the chinese capital.
Shen also said that it will intensify efforts to revive the economy of Hong Kong, which has entered into recession for the first time in a decade because of the trade war between China and the US and the protests. To achieve this, we will intensify the integration of the former british colony in the development plans of chinese, especially the project of megazona economic that covers Hong Kong, Macau and the major cities of the province of Canton.
The next Wednesday, Carrie Lam has planned a dialogue in Beijing with chinese vice premier Han Zheng, in which it will be, 22 weeks after the start of the protests, the first official meeting of the impopularísima head of the autonomous Government with the central authorities to discuss the situation in the former colony.
The action that points to Beijing may serve to mobilize even more to the disgruntled in Hong Kong. Plans for a patriotic education presented in 2013 were finally filed before the massive demonstrations of high school students. The implementation of a National Security law, ten years before, caused the largest protests since the return to chinese sovereignty in 1997. The measure also was suspended, and the then head of the autonomous Government, Tung Chee-hwa, resigned two years later.
And the further integration of Hong Kong into the fabric of china is, precisely, the case against the protesting participants in the current manifestations. After the demands of formal —universal suffrage, investigation of the behavior of the police, release of those detained in the protests, is the opposition, and the fear of the disappearance, more or less gradual, of the principle of “one country, two systems”, which guarantees the former colony a system of separation of powers and individual liberties nonexistent in the Chinese mainland.
