HK democrats upset as boycott plan dropped

HK democrats upset as boycott plan dropped

HONG KONG (Reuter): Hong Kong's pro-democracy camp, angry and feeling abandoned, heaped scorn on the United States and Britain yesterday for dropping a planned boycott of inaugural ceremonies for a new Beijing-picked legislature.

Emily Lau, an outspoken champion of democracy in the territory that reverts to Beijing at midnight on Monday, said the two countries were "disgusting and contemptible".

But she added: "I am not surprised."

Newspaper editorials and cartoonists had a field day with the decision by Washington and London to send their Hong Kong envoys to the swearing-in ceremony for the new legislature, which will replace a democratically-elected body.

Visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will stay away.

Lau and other popular politicians, including Democratic Party leader Martin Lee, will be dumped from the new legislature and several figures rejected by voters at the last elections will move in.

An editorial in the South China Morning Post, the territory's main English-language newspaper, said Britain and the United States had lost the moral high ground. It accused them of "shilly-shallying edging toward hypocrisy".

A cartoon in The Hong Kong Standard depicted the United States, Britain and big business trooping into the swearing-in with Lee outside crying: "They're selling us out."

Lee said the planned boycott had sent a "very strong message" that Britain and the United States would not accept the legitimacy of the new provisional legislature.

"I'm afraid it is much watered down, if not contradicted," he said.

Even some politicians more attuned to Beijing were startled at the last-minute U-turn before Britain's hands Hong Kong's 6.4 million people over to China after more than 150 years of colonial rule.

"It is baffling to see them blowing, as it were, hot and cold," said Ronald Arculli, a legislator with the usually pro- China Liberal Party.

A Foreign Office spokesman in London insisted: "This in no way implies approval of the provisional legislature to which we are adamantly opposed."

Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said Britain would strive to ensure that Beijing honors its promises to leave Hong Kong's free-wheeling capitalist way of life unchanged for 50 years under a "one country, two systems" formula.

Warning

Hong Kong's last British governor Chris Patten warned China not to use a heavy hand against any protests.

As the swearing-in ceremony gets under way, Lee and his supporters have said they will peacefully invade the colonial- style legislature building and denounce the new assembly from an outside balcony.

A spokesman for the China-appointed Provisional Legislature said yesterday they would allow democrats to protest inside the Legislative Council building but pledged to stop them giving speeches from a balcony.

The Provisional Legislature said in a statement it was taking "a flexible and sensible approach" to the matter.

Members of the scrapped legislature could enter the building "if they want to," said a spokesman for the appointed group, Simon Wong.

But Democratic Party members would not be permitted to go ahead with plans to speak to their supporters from the balcony of the building, he told AFP.

"The Provisional Legislature will not allow them," he said, adding the body would not reveal how it intended to block the protests.