Hong Kong fans booed their own national anthem

The national teams of Hong Kong and Iran have toed the line for the national anthems, a few minutes before the start of the first game between them for the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifiers on Tuesday, September 10th. It has been announced that the “March of the Volunteers”, the national anthem Hong Kong shares with China, will be heard first. This was the signal for the most bizarre crowd behavior ever during an international match.

About 10.000 spectators in the stands starting booing! All of them were obviously fans of the home team, most of them even wearing Hong Kong’s jerseys. But they showed no respect to their own anthem and added an exceptional footnote to the World Cup’s football history: It was the first time that a national anthem of the home team has been booed from their own fans. It should be mentioned that all of them remained proudly silent during the Iranian national anthem, as the protocol imposes.

Many of the fans showed their annoyance with another gesture: The so-called Black Bauhinia flag. This is no other but a black version of the (normally red) “national” Hong Kong flag, the Bauhinia, adopted in 1997, when the former British possession in Asia turned into Chinese sovereignty.

After the anthem has finished, all fans repeatedly chanted “Liberate Hong Kong” and some of them also sang a popular newly composed song, “Glory to Hong Kong”, which is considered as the unofficial anthem of the increasing number of protestors in the special Chinese prefecture.

In contrast with other territories, which have been absorbed by other states, Hong Kong (and nearby Macau, a former Portuguese territory turned into Chinese prefecture in 1999) has chosen to maintain sports autonomy. This was one of the benefits still enjoyed by the local citizens, who lost their British passports, but still function as a capitalist society into a communist state, after the “one country, two systems” doctrine accepted by the Chinese government.

But the Beijing rule trying to intervene to what the locals deem as internal affairs is not endured any more. All main streets of Hong Kong are full of people (sometimes millions of them), who call for democracy and express their complaints against the erosion of freedoms. Protests are sometimes violent.

Chinese authorities somewhat waited for this to happen. The Hong Kong Stadium, where the match took place, has a capacity of nearly 41.000, but only 14.000 tickets have been issued. The whole upper half remained closed and there was strong police presence. But nobody of the fans has been hurt of this. They tried to attract international attention once more, this time by peaceful means, although rather unusual.

Iran, great favorites of winning the match, got all three points with a steady performance and 2-0 win, scoring once in each half. Only a small minority of those in the stands bothered. Their intention was not to inspire their players make a football transgression and get a result, but get caught by the TV cameras.

Hong Kong fans revealed their intention of using all home matches of their national team in qualifier Group C to protest. Hong Kong will also host Bahrain, Iraq and Cambodia. They’ve cleared out that they’re not against the coach and players, who are expected to do their best in the field, although there aren’t any actual qualification chances.