A woman in Hong Kong was arrested for insulting the Chinese national anthem. Paula Leung, a 42-year-old online journalist was sentenced to three months in prison for waving a colonial-era Hong Kong flag when the anthem was played to Hong Kong claiming Olympic gold in July 2021.
She was given the sentence on Thursday. Leung said she had autism and learning difficulties. Leung was waving the flag in a shopping mall, where fencer Edgar Cheung’s medal ceremony was being shown on the big screen.
The medal was Hong Kong's second Olympic medal and its first one for fencing. Hong Kong, a former British colony, was handed over to China in 1997. However, it continues to represent itself separately at the Olympics. When the Chinese national anthem started playing on screen, people started booing. This was the first time the Chinese anthem of 'March of the Volunteers' was played at an Olympics medal ceremony for a Hong Kong athlete.
At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics in the US, when windsurfer Lee Lai-shan won a gold, “God Save The Queen” was played and Hong Kong's colonial-era flag was raised. In 2019, when pro-democracy protests took place in Hong Kong, protestors often waved the colonial-era flag. The city, in July 2021 made insulting the Chinese national anthem a punishable offence.
