National security law: video of Hong Kong PLA garrison troops doing live-fire training could be ‘warning to separatists’: analyst
- The footage, about two minutes long, was released on Weibo by the army’s official newspaper and said to have been taken at a location inside the city
- Timing of video’s release ‘cannot be uncalculated’, one analyst says, though another suggests army may simply be ‘showing off’ skills, weaponry
The PLA Daily, which serves as the voice of the Chinese army, posted footage on its Weibo account of soldiers from Hong Kong’s army garrison taking sniper training at an unidentified local firing range.
Posted on Sunday, the two-minute clip showed soldiers hitting targets, including distant or moving ones, with high accuracy. The training, which reportedly took the form of a shooting contest, also showed soldiers crawling with their rifles and shooting while lying on a swinging board.
The newspaper’s online report did not mention when or where the training took place or for how long, saying only that it was held “recently” at a Hong Kong location.
A senior officer in the video said the drills were designed to get shooters prepared for “actual combat”.
The release of the video comes as Beijing is set to impose a national security law on Hong Kong, in the run-up to Wednesday’s 23rd anniversary of the handover.
Critics have argued the new law, designed to punish acts of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces to endanger national security, would undermine the freedoms and civil rights guaranteed by the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law.