Holding flag high, residents in HK celebrate city's safety

Holding high a Chinese flag, Carey Chan jogged down the Avenue of Stars in Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui on the afternoon of October 1 to celebrate China’s National Day.

It was something he dared not do last year.

“I would have been ‘lynched’ by black-clad rioters then,” he said.

“But now I can express my opinions freely without the fear of being beaten up.”

Chan’s sense of freedom and safety is in sharp contrast to the situation a year ago when “people were jittery about simply going out because of anti-establishment protests.

Chan said his memory of last year’s National Day was of rioters throwing petrol bombs, torching entrances of Mass Transit Railway stations, and vandalizing public and private properties.

“But now Hong Kong is safer and calmer thanks to the national security law.”

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The Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was passed by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on June 30.

Dan Albertson, a freelance writer and translator from the United States living in Hong Kong, said the national security law had helped.

“The law has made life much less unpredictable in Hong Kong,” he said.

More than a year ago, Albertson, in his 30s, left Chicago to start a new life in Hong Kong. But he found himself unwittingly caught in violent protests and acts of destruction, vandalism and overall mayhem.

His neighborhood was ransacked almost every weekend during the peak of the upheaval.

Order is “essential” and “always a good thing,” Albertson said.

“Now there’s no need to worry about whether train services will suddenly stop or be altered, no need to fear being caught in the middle of something volatile.”

With the National Day and the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival falling on the same day this year, celebrations were held across Hong Kong with parades of double-decker buses and fishing vessels.

Festive banners were spotted hanging from small corner stores to grand skyscrapers.

The national security law has been effective in restoring stability so far, Chief Secretary for Administration of the HKSAR government Matthew Cheung Kin-chung said in a video message delivered to the 45th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Genev, on September 15.

Advocacies of Hong Kong independence and collusion with external forces have visibly subsided.

So have acts of violence and blatant defiance of law and order, he said.

While the Hong Kong police have taken resolute law enforcement actions against rioters, the daily lives of the vast majority of Hong Kong residents have remained unaffected.

“There are no mass arrests of dissidents and no shutting down of media ...

“People accused of committing crimes of rioting, unlawful assemblies and other public order offenses continue to be granted bail or acquitted by the courts,” Ronny Tong, a member of the Executive Council of the HKSAR, said.

“There are no additional restrictions on marches, rallies or other protests save those necessarily imposed by reason of COVID-19,” Tong said in an online article local media.