Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong under police protection in Taiwan after assault attempt
Student leader and local legislators in Taipei for political seminar
Taiwan police ramped up protection for Hong Kong student activist Joshua Wong Chi-fung and a few pro-democracy lawmakers after a failed attempt by a pro-China protester to assault him as he arrived in the island state in the early hours.
Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je pledged that police would “protect all guests”, adding that violence had no place in a civilised society like Taiwan’s.
Wong had been set to attend a seminar organised by a local political party over the weekend.
About 200 protesters from a pro-China group in Taiwan gathered at the arrival hall of Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport at midnight. They chanted slogans deriding Wong, and Hong Kong legislators Nathan Law Kwun-chung and Edward Yiu Chung-yim – who arrived on the same flight at 12.30am – as “independence scum”, saying they were not welcome in Taiwan.
There were about 100 police officers, but a man broke through their lines and almost punched Wong, who was hurried into a vehicle in time.
“I wasn’t expecting [pro-China protesters to show up] be it in Hong Kong or Taiwan,” Wong said on Saturday afternoon at the panel discussion, organised by Taiwan’s New Power Party, a rising political force born of the student-led Sunflower Movement in 2014, that put a brake on a trade pact with China.