The Hong Kong government has sought a court order to ban people from broadcasting or distributing a protest song that was sung as an anthem for the city's 2019 pro-democracy protests, after it was mistakenly played as China's national anthem at some international sporting events in the past year.
The Justice Department said in a statement Tuesday that it had applied for an injunction to prohibit "unlawful acts" relating to the protest song "Glory to Hong Kong" in a bid to thwart people from inciting the territory's secession from China.
"Recently, the song has also been mistakenly presented as the 'national anthem of Hong Kong' repeatedly," the department said.
"This has not only insulted the national anthem but also caused serious damage to the country and the HKSAR," it said, referring to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Last November, the protest song was played at a rugby sevens game in South Korea after an intern reportedly downloaded it from the internet. A similar mix-up occurred at a weightlifting championship in Dubai.
The government has applied to the High Court for an injunction that would criminalize such acts as broadcasting, performing, printing, publishing, distributing and reproducing the protest song in any way, including online, according to the statement.
The ban would also encompass the melody, lyrics and any adaptations of the song, the department said, citing the national security law, the sedition law and the national anthem law.
Although the government respects the rights and freedoms protected by the Basic Law, the territory's mini-constitution, freedom of speech is "not absolute," it said, adding the application pursues the legitimate aim of safeguarding national security.
Hong Kong leader John Lee had previously asked Google to modify results to display China's national anthem "March of the Volunteers" rather than the protest song when users searched for Hong Kong's national anthem, a request denied by the search engine.
During the pro-democracy movement in 2019, many protesters sang the song dubbed the territory's unofficial anthem, the lyrics of which referred to the "tears and blood" shed by "martyrs" in the fight for freedom and a liberated Hong Kong.
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