Jail for national anthem disrespect
Print Edition
CHINA has passed legislation that will punish anyone who disrespects the national anthem with a sentence of up to three years in prison.
The changes to China’s criminal law were approved during a committee meeting of the National People’s Congress on Saturday.
“Serious cases of disrespecting the country’s national anthem in public would get punishments including deprivation of political rights, criminal detention, and imprisonment of up to three years,” the amendment states.
China has been fine-tuning legislation on the proper way and place to sing its national anthem, recently tightening rules that already bar people from performing it at parties, weddings and funerals.
In September, a National Anthem Law applying to citizens on the Chinese mainland was passed which specified a much lesser jail term of 15 days for disrespecting the song.
The three-year sentence could apply in “serious” cases concerning disrespect toward the anthem, according to the amendment.
Under the National Anthem Law, “The March of the Volunteers” can no longer be played as background music in public places and “inappropriate” private performances of the song are also forbidden.
The top legislature also adopted decisions to apply the National Anthem Law in Hong Kong and Macau.
The law, which took effect on October 1, will be included in Annex III of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Annex III in the Basic Law of the Macau SAR, which lists national laws to be applied in the two regions.
Hong Kong’s government said on Saturday that the law will apply in the special administrative region once authorities enact a local version of the legislation and get it passed through the legislature.
Hong Kong politician Ip Kwok-him said: “When this law is passed, people must stand, there must be a display of solemnity.”
Ip, a Hong Kong deputy to the NPC, told a radio program on Saturday that people in the city would have to stop when they heard the anthem even if they were walking.
“I’ve personally experienced this in Bangkok, when walking on a pedestrian bridge, all of a sudden I heard a song, all the people on the bridge stopped. I had to stop too after I saw this,” he said.
The September law follows regulations on national anthem etiquette that were announced in 2014 to “enhance the song’s role in cultivating core socialist values.”
Written in 1935, China’s national anthem “March of the Volunteers” has lyrics by poet Tian Han and music by Nie Er.
The song encouraged Chinese soldiers and civilians during the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
The buoyant, military-minded score calls on the Chinese people to “march on” toward the establishment of a new nation.
It was chosen as the national anthem in 1949 and officially adopted in 1982.
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