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Hong Kong pro-democracy barricades rushed by crowd Hong Kong pro-democracy activists reinforce barricades at protest site
(about 4 hours later)
An angry crowd opposed to pro-democracy protests that have paralysed parts of Hong Kong for more than two weeks charged barricades used by the demonstrators on Monday, clashing with police as they attempted to storm the protest zone. Pro-democracy demonstrators in central Hong Kong have used cement to reinforce the barricades defending a protest site after being attacked by counter-protesters on Monday afternoon, raising the stakes in a student-led movement which has paralysed huge swaths of the city for the past 16 days.
Scuffles broke out as about two dozen men wearing surgical masks to hide their faces tried to forcefully remove the metal barricades that protesters have set up to block off main roads near the heart of Hong Kong’s financial district. Some were seen using box cutters to snap cables connecting the barricades. Hours after police began removing barricades across the city on Monday morning, hundreds of men – some of them wearing surgical masks to hide their faces – stormed various protest sites, assaulting protesters and dragging away remaining barricades themselves. Some were armed with crowbars and cutting tools, according to media reports. “Open the roads,” they chanted. Police at one point formed a human barrier to keep the two sides apart.
Taxi drivers joined in, some driving their cabs up to the barricades and leaning on their horns to express their anger about the traffic disruptions. A large contingent of local taxi and lorry drivers, angered by the movement’s impact on the city’s transportation network, joined the crowd of counter-demonstrators in Admiralty, a usually-bustling district in downtown Hong Kong and the movement’s de facto core. Some drove up to the barricades and honked their horns to voice their frustration.
A line of police officers held the crowd back, keeping them separated from the protesters on the other side of the barriers. Although the clashes eased by mid-afternoon, hundreds of protesters and police remained at the scene. Protesters at Admiralty have replaced some of the barriers and fortified them with cement-filled buckets and elaborate bamboo frames, according to pictures posted online.
Protester Alex Kwok said he received a scratch on his arm after he was attacked by several men whom he accused of being members of triads, or organised crime gangs. Many protesters have expressed suspicions that the attacks were premeditated.
The tension later eased as most of the crowd dispersed. Police took away some masked men inside the protest zone who tried to pick fights with the protesters, and later said they arrested three men, aged 18 to 47, at the clashes on suspicion of assault and carrying weapons. “People from New Territories, blue ribbon [Beijing] supporters, triads and taxi drivers must be coordinated by some sort of people … the work is so well distributed,” a 49-year-old protester surnamed Chan told Reuters. “They went to different places in order to keep protesters busy.”
“Before the police came, young men wearing masks and dark clothing came to pick fights with people and we heard that some of them had weapons,” said Kevin Ng, a college student who was at the scene and saw the scuffles. “I don’t know who the young men wearing masks were. We suspect they’re triad members but it’s hard to say. What other kind of group would organise themselves to come attack us?” Police arrested three people during the clashes for assault and possession of weapons.
Demonstrators have flooded the city’s streets since 28 September in a civil disobedience movement opposing restrictions on the territory’s inaugural election for its top leader in 2017. They want authorities to drop a plan to use a pro-Beijing committee to screen candidates. They also want chief executive Leung Chun-ying, the current Beijing-backed leader, to resign. Early on Monday morning, police “removed some obstacles” at 27 locations throughout the city, reopening seven sections of road, police chief superintendent Hui Chun-tak told reporters. They did not attempt to disperse the protesters.
Speaking to reporters at an event in Guangzhou, southern China, Leung stressed that the authorities had handled the protests with a “huge degree of tolerance”. He dodged a question about when officers would move in to clear the protests, only saying: “We cannot let this situation continue in the long-term.” “We want to point out that reinforcing the existing obstacles or setting up new obstacles to enlarge the occupied area and to block the roads is illegal and extremely irresponsible,” he said. “Police will collect evidence for investigation on any breach of the law.”
Leung also said: “I will not resign, and I don’t have to resign.” The protesters, at times numbering in the tens of thousands, demand that Beijing grant Hong Kong free elections by 2017, and that the city’s pro-Beijing chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, step down.
The confrontation came after police removed some barricades on the outer edge of the protest zone earlier in the day to allow some traffic through the area. Beijing rules the city under a “one country, two systems” arrangement, giving it a range of civil liberties unknown on the mainland, such as freedom of assembly and an independent judiciary. While Hong Kong’s mini-constitution promised that the city would achieve universal suffrage by 2017, central authorities decreed in August that candidates must be nominated by a committee stacked with Beijing loyalists, making it virtually impossible for a democrat to run.
Police stressed that the operation, carried out at dawn when the number of protesters is typically at its lowest, was not meant to clear the area, but to relieve traffic congestion as commuters returned to work. However, protesters suspected other motives. On Sunday, Leung said the movement was “out of control,” and that the protesters have “zero chance” of achieving their goals. He added that he would not step down.
Tens of thousands of protesters have occupied busy roads outside the city government headquarters as well as in two busy shopping districts elsewhere to press their demands but their numbers have dwindled. Mainland authorities have censored discussions of the movement online and detained dozens of people for openly supporting the protesters. State media has repeatedly called the movement an “illegal assembly” backed by “hostile foreign forces”, particularly the US. On Monday, the official newswire Xinhua said people from “every group in Hong Kong society” had called for the protesters to disperse “as soon as possible”.