Three people were arrested for turning their backs and remaining seated when China's national anthem was played prior to Hong Kong's home World Cup qualifier against Iran, police said Friday.
Football fans in Hong Kong used to boo the national anthem as a show of political discontent, but the government in 2020 banned the practice as part of a wider crackdown following huge democracy protests in the city.
At Hong Kong Stadium on Thursday prior to Hong Kong’s home World Cup qualifier against Iran, police said two men and a woman were arrested because they “turned their backs toward the pitch and did not stand for the playing of the national anthem”.
“Police stressed that anyone who publicly and intentionally insults the national anthem in any way commits a crime,” a statement said.
The three arrested were between the ages of 18 and 31. If convicted they face up to three years in jail and a fine of HK$50,000 ($6,400).
Hong Kong, whose hopes of reaching the next stage of qualifying for the 2026 World Cup were already over, went on to lose the game to Iran 4-2.
Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China but competes in its own name in many international sports, including football.
During the politically tumultuous 2010s, the Hong Kong team became a vessel for civic pride and occasionally anti-government sentiment.
At the time, the Chinese national anthem was routinely drowned out by boos before Hong Kong matches, enraging local and mainland officials.
Soon after Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong in 2020, the finance hub passed a separate local law criminalising insults towards the anthem.
The cheapest kind of pride, on the other hand, is national pride. For it reveals in those who have it the lack of individual qualities of which they could be proud, for otherwise they would not have recourse to what they share with so many millions. On the contrary, he who possesses significant personal merits will recognize most clearly the faults of his own nation, since he has them constantly before his eyes. But every miserable wretch, who has nothing in the world to be proud of, resorts to the last resort of being proud of the nation to which he happens to belong. He rests on this and is now gratefully prepared to defend with tooth and nail all the faults and follies peculiar to it.
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I can’t tell if China wants to be Texas, or Texas wants to be China?
*Sips tea* “Nationalism.”
I got chewed out for sitting during the Pledge of Allegiance in an Ohio high school.
So no prison sentence then?
Nationalism is a poison in the public consciousness everywhere it takes root.
Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851
Translated by Deepl
the anthem felt very insulted
such bullshit