The finals of the 15th National Games' rugby sevens brought high energy to Hong Kong's Kai Tak Sports Park on Friday night, as fans from both the host region and the mainland cheered on their teams and looked forward to increased exchanges through sports.
The rugby sevens, a highlight of the 15th National Games' Hong Kong segment, drew an energetic crowd to the new flagship stadium. Hong Kong and Jiangsu took the men's and women's rugby sevens gold respectively.
The Hong Kong men's team capped the event with an unbeaten record after defeating Shandong 26-19 in the final. The victory came 12 years after their last appearance at the National Games, where they had narrowly lost to Shandong to claim a silver medal.
The event was celebrated not just for athletic achievements but also for its role in fostering connections. A spectator from the mainland highlighted the unifying power of sport.
"It's great to see teams from the mainland and Hong Kong competing on the same stage and exchanging opinions with each other. We support all of them because the nature of sportsmanship isn't just about winning or losing. It's about everyone being able to enjoy the competition itself," he said.
The sentiment was echoed by local spectators, who expressed excitement at witnessing the national event in their city.
"We are so happy to see our mainland compatriots competing here in Hong Kong. We were really excited and made sure to get tickets as soon as possible. I've taken my kids with me to let them experience the atmosphere," said a spectator from Hong Kong.
Another Hong Kong spectator added, "We hope more friends from the mainland can come to Hong Kong, compete with us, and have more exchanges through sports."
The 15th edition of the National Games, China's premier multi-sport event, has broken new ground by being co-hosted across three engines of the Greater Bay Area city cluster in south China --Guangdong Province and the neighboring Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions. The games feature 34 sports with 419 events in the competitive program and 23 sports with 166 events in the mass participation program.
Spectators cheer National Games, hope for deeper mainland-Hong Kong ties through sports
Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama has underscored the need for the international community to properly recognize the historical injustices committed against Africa and support efforts to advance reparations for Africans and people of African descent.
Mahama made the remarks in an interview with the China Media Group (CMG) which was aired Friday and recorded during the Ghanaian President's trip to Beijing in October.
Earlier this year, Mahama had issued a call for collective action in securing justice for Africans and individuals of African descent through reparations at the 38th Ordinary Session of the African Union.
Located in West Africa along the northern shore of the Gulf of Guinea and bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the south, Ghana boasts a more than 500-km coastline and abundant agricultural, fishery, forestry and mineral resources. Yet its history, like much of the African continent, has been deeply scarred by centuries of foreign aggression.
From the 15th century onward, Western colonial powers invaded coastal areas of what is now Ghana, plundering resources and conducting the slave trade, casting a long colonial shadow over the African continent which hung for centuries.
In 1955, the successful convening of the Bandung Conference -- which gathered representatives of Asian and African states in Indonesia -- ignited a new wave of national liberation movements these continents, accelerating the collapse of the global colonial system.
Ghana's independence in 1957 lit the first torch of freedom in sub-Saharan Africa and was hailed as the dawn of Africa's awakening.
Africa's first tragedy, the transatlantic slave trade, constituted an extremely grave atrocity, Mahama said.
During that period, an estimated 12 to 15 million Africans were forcibly taken from the continent and sent to the Caribbean, the Americas and Europe. They contributed to the building of modern Western civilization, yet received no compensation for their labor, whether working on sugar plantations or constructing railways, roads and bridges, he noted.
Mahama outlined his wish that the United Nations takes action to recognize the slave trade as "the greatest crime against humanity" and takes steps to ensure reparations are paid back to the descendants of those who suffered.
"We believe that first and foremost, it should be recognized as the greatest crime against humanity. We must condemn the activity of slavery of the people who were shipped to what I call the 'New World', that's the Western world. It's estimated that as many as 2 million did not arrive at the destination because they were either too sick or they died on board, and they were just tossed over into the ocean. That was genocide. And so it's an issue that the first step is for us to accept. And so Ghana wants to move a motion in the UN next year asking the world to recognize the slave trade as the greatest crime against humanity. And so we'll continue to push on the African [Union] Champion on Reparations when I spoke even at the UN, I raised the issue of reparations and so I do think that that is to do with slavery," he said.
Mahama also stressed the impact of colonialism, which further entrenched injustice and led to global inequality as African nations were ruthlessly exploited.
"With regards to colonialism, the Berlin Conference (1884–1885) partitioned Africa and the European nations took colonies in Africa, ran those colonies, exploited their natural resources and transferred those natural resources, oil palm, gold, minerals, cocoa and other products, to develop their countries. And it's only from the late 1950s that countries like Ghana got independent. And so that was an injustice. Colonialism was an injustice against African countries," he said.
Ghanaian president urges reparative justice for Africa, citing slavery, colonial exploitation
