HKong Olympic gold medalist Vivian Kong said she would quit her fencing career days after controversy erupted over her apparent support for Beijing’s crackdown on the city’s pro-democracy movement, underlining political tensions in the Asian financial hub. .
An academic article intended to be his master’s thesis showed that Kong, one of the city’s two athletes to win the gold medal at the Paris Games, condemned the 2014 protests calling for freer elections. The document began circulating last week and caused some fans to turn their backs on the athlete after initially celebrating her victory in the women’s epee last month.
Nathan Law, a self-exiled former lawmaker and student leader of the demonstrations, said on Friday he made a mistake in congratulating Kong on his triumph, describing his political stance as “extremely problematic”. Many users on LIHKG, a forum popular among supporters of the 2014 movement, lampooned Kong after viewing her as a source of pride for the former British colony.
Kong has not publicly commented on the episode and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The 30-year-old Stanford graduate said in an Instagram post that she would start a charity to promote sports for children.
The paper, presented to Renmin University in Beijing in 2021, argued that protesters’ “chaos and illegal acts” threatened national security. He welcomed a new national security law to eliminate “anti-China and anti-Hong Kong powers” linked to the 2014 movement, where protesters blocked key roads to extract political concessions from authorities.
The crackdown led to the arrest of dozens of democracy advocates and the subsequent rewriting of electoral rules virtually ensured that only pro-Beijing candidates could run for public office. Law left the city for London, where he obtained political asylum.
See more information: What to know about Hong Kong’s controversial new national security law
The debate over Kong has divided the city, with those who lament the loss of political freedoms rejecting him and those who support Beijing’s action supporting the fencer.
“The angry attacks on Vivian’s political beliefs are a horrible reflection of the perversity and deformity of these sycophantic puppets of external powers,” said Regina Ip, an official counselor.
Hong Kong has had the best Olympics in history, with two gold and two bronze medals to date. Kong and fellow fencer Edgar Cheung will each receive a reward of HK$6 million (US$771,000) for winning a gold medal from the Hong Kong Jockey Club.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
