Soccer fans booing the Chinese national anthem and restaurants using it as background music even if the event is private will run afoul of the new legislation to safeguard the dignity of March of the Volunteers, police’s top brass say in guidelines distributed to frontline officers.
The Post has learned that the top management of the city’s 31,000-strong police force had been briefing various units over the past few days, after the Legislative Council passed the national anthem bill on June 4. The previous evening, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor released a photo of her signing off the bill.
Their antics were listed in the National Anthem Ordinance Investigation Guidelines, circulated among the police force, as the top example. Frontline officers were instructed to gather evidence by looking at the person’s behaviour including whether he had expressed the intent to insult the national anthem “publicly or through social media”, before his act, another PowerPoint presentation given to police officers said.
But distributing or disseminating materials deemed as insulting the anthem online on social platforms could constitute a breach, although it was unlikely that service providers would be caught as it would be difficult to establish their intent.