Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday slammed the violence and foreign interference in Hong Kong.
In an interview with AFP during his visit to France, Wang reiterated that issues related to Hong Kong are China's internal affairs, and that according to the Charter of the United Nations, no country has the right to determine the internal affairs of any other nation.
Wang said one basic fact about Hong Kong is that what is going on in the Chinese city nowadays is in no way peaceful protests, but pure and simple street violence. Some rioters, wearing similar clothes and face masks and holding iron rods and Molotov cocktails, have unscrupulously committed crimes, he added.
Wang accused the mobs of smashing shops, damaging public facilities, beating up innocent citizens, paralyzing airports and even openly attacking police, threatening their lives. These are crimes and cannot be tolerated in any country or any society, Wang said.
Hong Kong has always been advocating the rule of law, any action should be conducted within the framework of the law, and any discontent should not be an excuse for violence, Wang said.
He noted that the most significant thing for Hong Kong now is to stop violence, curb disorder, restore order and administer the city by law.
Wang said another basic fact about Hong Kong is that some foreign forces, including some media outlets, turning a blind eye to what is really happening and even calling white black, have called the street violence a pro-democracy move and branded the police deployment in accordance with law as violence.
Wang said some foreign forces have encouraged and indulged the street crimes so as to upset Hong Kong, and ruin its prosperity built by generations of hard work and its great historic progress achieved since the implementation of the "one country, two systems" policy.
These attempts will never and can never succeed, Wang added.
People in Hong Kong will certainly recognize these agendas of the foreign forces, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government will certainly restore the rule of law, and China's central government will certainly stick to the "one country, two systems" principle according to the constitution and the Basic Law, Wang said.
Wang expressed the hope that people with conscience around the globe will view the situation in Hong Kong objectively and impartially.
The violence in Hong Kong is being imitated elsewhere, for example in Spain's Catalonia, Britain's London, and the streets of Chile, he noted, saying some demonstrators have announced that they would turn their cities into another Hong Kong and imitate the street violence there.
Some even called the violence in Hong Kong "a beautiful landscape," and such remarks made by those people have lost the minimum conscience, Wang said.
