Protesters, riot police converge at airport

HK commercial centers paralysed

HONG KONG, Sept 1, (RTRS): Thousands of protesters blocked roads and public transport links to Hong Kong airport on Sunday in a bid to draw global attention to their fight for greater democracy for the Chinese-ruled city which is facing its biggest political crisis in decades.

Passengers entered and left the terminal freely and planes were taking off and landing but trains were suspended and approach roads to the airport impassable as protesters erected barricades and overturned trolleys at the airport and in the nearby new town of Tung Chung.

The MTR subway station was closed and demonstrators smashed CCTV cameras and lamps with metal poles and dismantled station turnstiles. Police appeared to be running in all directions and made several arrests outside the station.

Protesters had urged the public to target access to one of the world’s busiest and most efficient airports, built on reclaimed land around a tiny outlying island and reached by a series of bridges which were packed with traffic.

“If we disrupt the airport, more foreigners will read the news about Hong Kong,” said one 20-year-old protester, asking not to be named.

Black-clad demonstrators targeted the airport three weeks ago, jamming the terminal in sometimes violent clashes with police and prompting some flights to be cancelled or delayed. Police said protesters hurled iron poles, bricks and rocks on to the railway track near the airport station and trespassed on the track. By early evening protesters in the immediate vicinity of the airport had left, but protesters in Tung Chung remained.

“We have no idea how to leave. We’re stuck,” a masked protester said, as others looked for buses and ferries to get back home.

Sunday’s demonstration comes after police and protesters clashed overnight in some of the most intense violence

The Islamic State group said in a statement posted late Saturday on an IS-affiliate website that two traffic police officers were severely wounded when a “security detachment from the soldiers of the Caliphate” detonated an explosive device in a Dhaka street targeting the two officers.

The policemen were being treated in a hospital and their injuries were not life threatening.

The IS has claimed similar attacks on police in the past. Authorities do not publicly since unrest erupted more than three months ago over concerns Beijing was planning to erode the autonomy granted to the former British colony when it was handed back to China in 1997.

China denies the charge of meddling in Hong Kong, which it says is an internal affair. It has denounced the protests and warned of the damage to the economy.

Tourist numbers have plummeted in recent weeks and international trade fairs cancelled as the territory faces its first recession in a decade.

China is eager to quell the unrest before the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on Oct 1. It has accused foreign powers, particularly the United States and Britain, of fomenting the unrest.

Several hundred demonstrators also gathered outside the British consulate in central Hong Kong, waving Union Jack flags and chanting “God save the Queen”.

Clashes

On Saturday Hong Kong police fired tear gas and water cannon and pro-democracy protesters threw petrol bombs in the latest in a series of chaotic clashes that have plunged the Chinese-ruled city into its worst political crisis in decades.

Police fired round after round of tear gas and protesters took cover behind umbrellas between the local headquarters of China’s People’s Liberation Army and the government. Protesters also threw bricks dug up from pathways at police.

Many shops and restaurants in protest areas popular with tourists were shuttered, while curious visitors peered out from windows of some luxury hotels overlooking the demonstrations.

Protest numbers had dwindled by the early hours of Sunday, with just a few hundred demonstrators and some riot police visible.

The water cannon unleashed bluedyed

reveal the results of their investigations.

Bangladesh has a history of attacks by radical groups. (AP)

Pakistan PM leads demonstration:

Cities around Pakistan came to a standstill on Friday as tens of thousands of people poured onto the streets in a government-led demonstration of solidarity with the disputed region of Kashmir, after India revoked its autonomy this month.

The Pakistani national anthem and an water, to make it easier for police to identify protesters.

Riot police then marched on foot towards the neighbouring Admiralty district, followed by 20 police cars, where protesters had thrown fire bombs from flyovers, some landing close to police. Others shone blue and green lasers at police lines.

There were unconfirmed reports of an off-duty policeman being wounded.

In the neighbouring Wanchai bar and restaurant district, police fought running battles with protesters, some beating them with truncheons, according to Reuters witnesses. There were several arrests.

“We have to keep protesting, we cannot let China take back Hong Kong now,” said Evelyn, a 25-year-old asset manager, chanting “gangster” at police outside a subway station across the harbour from the central business area in Kowloon district. Asked what she would do if authorities did not respond to protesters’ demands, she said: “Maybe I will leave Hong Kong. I absolutely cannot live under Chinese rule.”

The protests, which at one point blocked three key roads, came on the fifth anniversary of a decision by China to curtail democratic reforms and rule out universal suffrage in Hong Kong, a former British colony that was returned to China in 1997.

“The behaviours of the radical protesters gravely breach the public peace and pose a serious threat to the safety of police officers on duty and members of the public at the scene,” the government said in a statement.

The People’s Liberation Army on Thursday rotated its troops in Hong Kong in what it said was a routine operation. Their Hong Kong HQ was the former base of the British military garrison.

Senior Chinese officials have warned that if the turmoil persists, “the central government must intervene”.

anthem for Kashmir played across television and radio, while traffic came to a standstill, and trains stopped, as part of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s campaign to draw global attention to the plight of the divided Himalayan region.

“We are with them in their testing times. The message that goes out of here today is that as long as Kashmiris don’t get freedom, we will stand with them,” Khan told thousands of demonstrators in the capital, Islamabad.

Muslim-majority Kashmir has long been a flashpoint between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. Both countries rule parts of Kashmir while claiming it in full. Two of the three wars they have fought have been over it.

In Indian Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar, suspected militants killed a 62-year-old man, police said, despite a security blanket. The trader was shot outside his home on Thursday night.

Thousands of paramilitary police are deployed in the streets of Srinagar to quell protests stemming from India’s move to revoke a special status for the territory.

India stripped Kashmir of the special status on Aug 5, blocking the right to frame its own laws and allowing non-residents to buy property there. The government said the reform would facilitate Kashmir’s development, to the benefit of all.

But the move angered many residents of the region, which has been under a security clamp-down ever since with telephone lines, internet and television networks blocked and restrictions on movement and assembly.

Restrictions were tightened in Srinagar on Friday ahead of prayers. In parts of the city where deployment was thin most of this week, armed paramilitary patrols returned to the streets in large numbers, manning checkpoints made with concertina wire and metal barricades. (RTRS)