As protests intensify and broaden in their targets, the government in Beijing seems poised to intervene
TEAR-GAS NO LONGER seems shocking in Hong Kong’s Central district. Fifty days on from the first huge marches, the territory's nameless, leaderless protest movement is escalating. Confronting relentless activism, the police have been criticised, yet again, for their heavy-handed tactics. The protesters, too, are becoming more violent. The city’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, has not shown herself in public for a week.
In previous weeks the large numbers of people and a peaceful march have helped calm tempers. This time protesters were antagonistic from the outset. Many came kitted-up with masks, goggles and hats to protect against tear-gas and pepper spray. Some pulled up railings to use as barricades and bricks to use as weapons. Protesters denied coming to Yuen Long to pick a fight with the villagers but insisted that if triad members turned up they were ready.
But if the protesters behaved better than many had feared, the police did not. At 10pm police cleared the station with a liberal use of batons. Hospitals reported that 24 people were being treated, two for serious injuries. Amnesty International, a human-rights watchdog, denounced “repeated instances where police officers were the aggressors; beating retreating protesters, attacking civilians in the train station and targeting journalists.
As they did a week earlier, police swept slowly through, trying to disperse the crowds. To slow them down, protesters for the first time lit fires in the street. Locals and tourists took the chaos in their stride. Couples enjoying pizza in a roadside restaurant had a front-row seat as a tear-gas canister exploded outside the window. Later, fleeing protesters got a thumbs-up from an old lady in the stairwell of her apartment building.
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