Global fashion brand Zara has said store closures in Hong Kong on Monday weren’t related to ongoing anti-China protests in the city. The clarification comes after the Chinese social media speculated the retailer’s employees were supporting the demonstrators.
According to a Bloomberg report, the company in a post on its official Weibo account, a social media platform like Twitter, on Monday said “Zara has never made any comments or undertaken any actions related to a strike in Hong Kong."
"Zara does not back a strike and supports ‘one country, two systems'," the post further said, referring to a general strike called by unions as part of the protests, and China’s policy for governing Hong Kong.
The denial comes in times when multinational companies are trapped in between strained conflict that has come out from a protest against an extradition law into a broader challenge to Beijing’s authority in the city.
Cathay Pacific Airways Hongkong’s largest air carrier has been facing resistance from the Chinese authorities after its employee took part in the protests.
HSBC Holdings Plc to PwC, have been the subject of online speculation over their positions on the protests that City is seeing for the almost three months now.
A company representative on Tuesday confirmed that all its stores on Hong Kong island were shut Monday, except one, but refused to give a reason for the closures. Most of Zara’s stores in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district were open on Monday, she said.
Global Times, the state-run tabloid, in an editorial, said whatever was the reason of store closure, Zara should not “broadcast any suspicious signals like this at a time when Chinese society is being troubled” by the incidents in Hong Kong.
