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Hong Kong protests
Hong KongPolitics

Are Hong Kong protesters pro-American or British when they wave the US and UK flags? The answer is complicated

  • The flying of flags of other countries at protests is often cited as evidence of foreign interference or an attempt to spark an uprising against central government
  • But ask the flag-bearers themselves and the picture is more nuanced and quite different from these assumptions

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Colonial Hong Kong flags fly in Central on Friday night. Photo: Winson Wong
Sum Lok-kei
Foreign flags are by now such a predictable feature of Hong Kong’s protests that they no longer raise eyebrows among the city’s residents but to foreigners they seem like an extreme provocation challenging China’s sovereignty over the city.

They are also often cited as evidence of foreign interference or part of a “colour revolution”, in which foreign hands are trying to steer an uprising against the central government.

But ask the flag-bearers themselves and the picture is more nuanced and quite different from these assumptions, at least according to interviews the Post conducted over the past weeks.

On Friday night, there were two lone extradition bill protesters waving United States flags on the edge of a crowd of thousands gathered at Central’s Chater Garden for a rally to raise international awareness of the movement.
A demonstrator waves the American flag during a protest in Chater Garden on Friday. Photo: Bloomberg
A demonstrator waves the American flag during a protest in Chater Garden on Friday. Photo: Bloomberg

Elsewhere in the area, a dozen colonial British flags fluttered in the evening breeze. Apart from foreign flags, a scattering of pro-independence flags for movements in Hong Kong and Taiwan have also been sighted at protests, a different provocation that analysts said would also likely irritate Beijing.

There have been 11 consecutive weekends of protests against the now-shelved extradition bill that would have allowed the transfer of fugitives to jurisdictions such as mainland China.

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