Beijingers told to keep off handover bash

A senior official told journalists that most of the city’s 12 million residents must be excluded from attending festivities “or it’s going to be like hell with traffic jams and the like”.

“This is an organised event. Ordinary people are advised not to go to Tiananmen and to stay home and watch live telecast,” he said adding that security forces will not object to private celebrations if people abided by a 1994 ban on neighbourhood fireworks and kept away from the VIP events.

In Beijing, a host of regulations are being issued limiting what exactly can be done by the public. Beijing daily announced a fireworks ban was still in place even though at the last National People’s Congress, Premier Li peng had urged Beijing to lift the ban for the historic handover.

Other regulations governing traffic on Monday and Tuesday, both holidays, have been announced. Under this, most of Chang’An Avenue, leading to Tiananmen Square will be closed to traffic to allow an estimated one lakh guests to come and go on Monday night’s gala celebrations at the Square, venue of the 1989 pro-democracy crack-down in central Beijing.

A security operation bigger and tighter than usual is being prepared and 35,000 police and troops stationed at vantage points were patrolling the streets.

The authorities will not be taking any chances at a time when some 550 foreign journalists are scouting around for `juicy’ stories on communist China. Beijingers have not forgotten the bus bomb that went off during the NPC session in March or the more serious blasts in China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in February during mourning for Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the armed police, responsible for security and fireworks at the handover ceremony, to be held in Beijing and other major cities, have vowed to ensure smooth conduct of all activities as their contribution to celebrate Hong Kong’s return to the motherland.

Meanwhile in Hong Kong, the mission of “police force is to guarantee tight security and perfect safety for the grand handover ceremonies scheduled from midnight of June 30 to July 1,” Hong Kong’s commissioner of police, Eddie Hui Ki-On said.

“The members of the police force feel greatly honoured to take part in the security work for the ceremonies, ” he said hoping that everything would go smoothly since a galaxy of world leaders would be present, alongwith some 8,000-strong international media, in Hong Kong from today onwards.

He said that his force will be positioned in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center – the venue for the ceremonies- round the clock till 1700 hours on July 1, which will be the busiest days for the territory’s police force in its history.