US human rights report on Occupy protests gets Hong Kong government offices confused
State Department take on Occupy protests gets its government offices mixed up
Where is the "central government office" in Hong Kong under "one country, two systems"? It proved to be a tricky question that apparently confused the US State Department.
As the US government released it annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices yesterday that looked into global rights last year, one section on Hong Kong pinpointed problems regarding restricted electoral rights, threats to academic freedom and media self-censorship.
When it came to freedom of assembly during a stormy year on the local political scene, the US reported that the special administrative region had put up barricades at both the Legislative Council and Beijing's liaison office after a protest outside Legco against a plan to build two new towns in the northeast New Territories. However, the fences were actually erected at Hong Kong government headquarters at Tamar in Admiralty, adjacent to Legco, not the liaison office in Western district.
"Activists and pan-democratic legislators, however, expressed concern that the government took a more restrictive view of protests that occurred at the Central Government Liaison Office," the report stated.
