Beijing: Five persons including a Hong Kong man linked to the city’s pro-democracy opposition have been arrested in China over a plot to use a drone to disrupt a fence-mending visit by a top Chinese Communist party leader to the global financial hub, a media report said today.
Two persons were arrested from Hong Kong and three others from the mainland over the alleged plot involving a drone ahead of the visit of the third ranking ruling Communist Party of China, (CPC) leader Zhang Dejiang, Police in Shenzhen city located close to Hong Kong said yesterday.
This is the first visit by a top level Chinese leader after the 75 days-long agitation in 2014 in which thousands of people pitched tents occupying key roads in Hong Kong, demanding Beijing to rescind on a rule brought in by it to screen the candidates to contest the 2017 election for the Chief Executive.
One of the arrested persons from Hong Kong identified as a 56-year-old man surnamed Guo was said to be helping a member of the “opposition” to cause a nuisance. He is said to have “financed several figures in the (Hong Kong) opposition”.
He was described as a long-time sponsor of the opposition camp and had procured a drone for the opposition figure, only named as “Tsang”, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported today.
Tsang Kin-shing, a former lawmaker of Hong Kong has confirmed that he had asked some friends, including Guo, to buy a drone from the mainland a month ago, the report said.
Tsangnow, a member of the League of Social Democrats who is known as The Bull, said he had thought of using a drone for protests, not just for Zhang’s visit.
Zhang, Chairman of the National People’s Congress, (NPC), China’s highest legislature is scheduled to visit Hong Kong tomorrow ending a four-year vacuum over increasing alienation of the former British colony over Beijing attempts to select candidates to contest polls affectively removing chances of “pro-independence” backers to join the electoral fray.
Hong Kong merged with China in 1997 as a Special Administrative Region of the mainland ending British rule since 1839.
Besides “inspecting” Hong Kong, Zhang will take part in a meeting formally endorsing the province role in China’s “belt and road” strategic initiative. Official media reported that Zhang, also the leader of China’s central coordination group for Hong Kong and Macau affairs, would “inspect” the city.
The “inspection” may feature unprecedented face-to-face encounters with pan-democratic lawmakers at a 40-minute cocktail reception which comes just months after the city experienced arguably its bloodiest social unrest since the 1960s, the report said.
Hundreds of protesters mainly students pitched tents and occupied main location of the city, attacked police.
The pan-democrats have already said no to attending the banquet after the reception, the report added.
PTI
