People’s Daily (October 5) published its first Commentator's article on the Hong Kong protests in 5 weeks, expressing the central government’s support for the Hong Kong government’s 4 October decision to invoke the Emergency Regulations Ordinance to enact anti-mask regulation. The article said that the past three months of “violent activities” have clearly shown that the “disturbance that arose around the revision of the extradition law has already completely degenerated” and that certain street protests “are evolving in the direction of premeditated, planned, organized violent crime, and have already seriously threatened public safety.” It argued that an important reason for the violence was that the “bandits” covered their faces with masks, which it said is highly correlated with violence. Thus, the mask ban would “tear down the bandits’ ‘psychological umbrella’ and provide a powerful starting point for stopping violence, controlling the chaos, and restoring order.” The article also noted international precedent for their mask ban, saying such laws have been implemented in “more than 10 US states,” various European countries, and Canada (where wearing a mask during a riot carries a maximum ten-year prison sentence). It claimed that the law would only affect the “minority that uses masks to violently throw Hong Kong into disorder,” and “will not impact the rights and freedoms that Hong Kong residents legally enjoy, including the freedom to assemble,” because legal demonstrations and normal petitions “need not be secretive.”
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