Hundreds take part in cross-border Hong Kong rallies

Aug 1, 2010, 11:38 GMT

Hong Kong - Hundreds of people took part in cross-border rallies in Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou on Sunday calling for the preservation of Cantonese, a dialect that is spoken in southern China.

In Hong Kong, protestors marched to the territory government's offices in the central business district.

The demonstrations were one of the few occasions when people on both sides of the border joined together in a common cause.

Previous events have included the 1989 Tiananmen massacre where pro-democracy protests in China spilled over into Hong Kong and pro-communist demonstrations in Hong Kong during 1967 to support China's Cultural Revolution.

Sunday's demonstrations also marked the first time Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong and China's Guangdong province have come together to defend their language.

The protests were organised through email, Twitter and Facebook amid concern that Cantonese had become increasingly marginalised.

This followed a decision by Chinese authorities to switch prime-time television programmes from Cantonese to China's official language, Mandarin.

About 98 per cent of Hong Kong's population speak Cantonese, which because of its nine phonetic tones and different pronunciation is more difficult to master than Mandarin which has four tones.

Ip Ho-yee, one participant in the Hong Kong rally told local broadcaster RTHK, the demonstration was also about free speech.

She said that since freedom of expression was suppressed in the mainland, the Hong Kong demonstrators would exercise their rights to free speech and assembly to protect the Cantonese language from any threat of elimination.

In China, authorities said the demonstrations supporting Cantonese were politically motivated.