RIVAL PROTESTERS CLASH IN HK
Baton-wielding cops break up fights between pro-China and anti-govt protesters
BATON-wielding Hong Kong police moved in to break up scuffles yesterday between pro-China protesters and those denouncing perceived Chinese meddling at the start of rallies planned for across the city after months of often violent unrest.
The pro-China demonstrators chanted “Support the police” and “China, add oil” at a shopping mall, adapting a line used by anti-Hong Kong government protesters and loosely meaning: “China, keep your strength up.”
“Hong Kong is China”, one woman shouted at passers-by, who shouted obscenities in return in an angry pushing and pulling stand-off, marked more by the shouting than violence.
The clashes in the Kowloon Bay area of the Hong Kong “special administrative zone” of China spilled onto the streets, with each confrontation captured by dozens of media and onlookers on their smartphones. Police detained several people.
Protesters complaining about
perceived Chinese interference in the former British colony came out in the hundreds across the territory on Friday, singing and chanting on the Mid-Autumn Festival, in contrast with the previous weekends’ violence when police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon.
Anti-government protesters also gathered in the downtown Central district and the northwestern New Territories district of Tin Shui Wai.
“We need to tell the government to respond to our five demands, otherwise it will think we accept the withdrawal (of the extradition bill),” said protester Mandy, 26, in Tin Shui Wai, where crowds, a few waving the United States Stars and Stripes, shouted: “Liberate Hong Kong.”
The spark for the anti-government protests was the now-withdrawn bill and concerns that Beijing is eroding civil liberties, but many young protesters are also angry about sky-high living costs and a lack of job prospects.
Their four other demands are: retraction of the word “riot” to describe rallies, release of all detained demonstrators, an independent inquiry into perceived police brutality and the right for Hong Kong people to choose their own leaders.
The extradition bill would have allowed people to be sent to mainland China for trial in Communist Party-controlled courts, despite Hong Kong having its own much-cherished legal system.