Satellite photos show Chinese armoured vehicles on border of Hong Kong
Posted by freemexy on August 16th, 2019
Satellite photos show what appear to be armoured personnel carriers and other vehicles belonging to the China’s paramilitary People’s Armed police parked in a sports stadium in the city of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, which some have interpreted as Beijing threatening increased force against pro-democracy protesters.To get more china news english, you can visit shine news official website.
The pictures collected on Monday by Maxar’s WorldView show more than 100 vehicles sitting on and around the soccer stadium at the Shenzhen Bay sports centre just across the harbour from the Asian financial hub that has been rocked by more than two months of near-daily street demonstrations.
A US state department spokesperson said on Wednesday: “The United States is deeply concerned by reports of Chinese paramilitary movement along the Hong Kong border. The United States strongly urges Beijing to adhere to its commitments … to allow Hong Kong to exercise a high degree of autonomy.”
Flights at Hong Kong’s airport, one of the world’s busiest, were disrupted on Monday and Tuesday by a mass demonstration and occasional violence inside its terminal.
Chinese state media have said only that the Shenzhen exercises had been planned beforehand and were not directly related to the unrest in Hong Kong, although they came shortly after the central government in Beijing said the protests were beginning to show “sprouts of terrorism”.The US president, Donald Trump, tweeted that US intelligence believed that the Chinese government has moved troops to its border with Hong Kong, and that: “Everyone should be calm and safe!”
Beijing has been apparently reluctant to send in police or army units from the mainland or to mobilise the People’s Liberation Army garrison in Hong Kong to quell the unrest. It’s seen as mindful of the devastating effect that would have both on the territory’s reputation as a safe and stable place to invest in, and as indication of the Communist party’s failure to win over the hearts and minds of the city’s 7.3 million residents, 22 years after the former British colony was handed over to China.
It would also be a shocking reminder of the PLA’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations centred on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square 30 years ago, which remains a taboo subject in China but is memorialised with a massive rally and march each year in Hong Kong.
Mainland China is believed to have already dispatched officers to fortify the ranks of the Hong Kong police, and may also have planted decoys among the protesters in order to encourage more violent acts that could eventually turn ordinary Hongkongers against the protest movement.
Such a change in sentiments does not yet appear to have happened despite rising violence surrounding protests and the shutdown of the city’s usually bustling international airport for two days after it was occupied by demonstrators