Hong Kong’s government will outlaw online desecrations of China’s national flag and emblem by amending the city’s National Flag and National Emblem Ordinance (NFNEO) in the coming days, the Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) reported Thursday.
The NFNEO Bill 2021 proposes the banning of public and intentional desecrations of the Chinese national flag or emblem “by burning, mutilating, scrawling on, defiling or trampling on it or its image.”
“The amendments would also outlaw the publication of desecrating acts, meaning that ‘public and intentional desecrating acts in relation to the national flag and national emblem committed in both real life and the virtual world would be an offence,'” according to HKFP. The legislative proposal offers “publishing an image of a defiled national flag on Facebook” as an example of a virtual offense.
Hong Kong’s government will officially announce the NFNEO Bill 2021 on August 13. The proposed amendment will have its first and second reading before Hong Kong’s legislature on August 18.
The bill also proposes “extending the time allowable for a prosecution for up to two years ‘to allow sufficient time for the Police to complete an investigation,'” according to HKFP. Hong Kong’s government is further mulling a new mandate that would require the head of the city’s Education Bureau to instruct public schools about “the daily display of the [Chinese] national flag and the weekly conduct of a national flag-raising ceremony.”
Hong Kong residents previously enjoyed limited civil liberties and a semi-autonomous government for over two decades after Britain returned the city to Chinese rule in 1997. Beijing granted Hong Kong its finite freedoms under the terms of a post-colonial handover agreement. Pro-China forces within Hong Kong’s government have steadily extinguished the city’s traditional liberties over the past year, however. The crackdown came under the guise of a “National Security Law” imposed on Hong Kong by the Chinese Communist Party rubber-stamp legislature in June 2020.
The law served as the Chinese Communist Party’s response to steady pro-democracy protests across Hong Kong for an entire year prior. The National Security Law went into effect in Hong Kong on June 30, 2020. It created four new crimes: subversion, secession, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces.
“For the four offences, ‘serious’ cases will generally attract penalties of at least 10 years and up to life imprisonment. Regular cases will attract penalties of a minimum of three years behind bars and a maximum of 10 years,” HKFP reported at the time.
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