Hong Kong student who fell during protest clashes dies

BEIJING, China (AFP) – Hong Kong prodemocracy protesters called Friday for city-wide vigils to mourn a student who died from injuries sustained when he fell during clashes with police.

Alex Chow, a 22-year-old computer science undergraduate, was certified dead at 8.09 a.m on Friday, Queen Elizabeth Hospital said.

Chow was taken to hospital in an unconscious state in the early hours of Monday morning following late-night clashes between police and protesters.

He was found lying unconscious in a pool of blood inside a car park that police had fired tear gas into after protesters hurled objects from the building.

The precise chain of events leading to Chow's fall are unclear and disputed, but he has been embraced by the fivemonth-old protest movement and his death could trigger renewed clashes as the city braces for another weekend of rallies.

Chow was a student at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The college was holding its graduation ceremony Friday morning, and university head Wei Shyy paused the proceedings to announce Chow's death and observe a moment of silence.

Fellow students had been holding a vigil round the clock for Chow as doctors battled to save his life. Sources told AFP doctors had performed two surgeries in a bid to reduce swelling in his brain.

China has slammed radical protesters in Hong Kong as "mobsters" using violence to influence upcoming local elections, after a pro-Beijing lawmaker was injured in a stabbing.

In the latest incident, a man holding a bouquet approached pro-Beijing lawmaker Junius Ho on Wednesday morning as the politician was campaigning in his constituency near the border with China.

The attack was "not only a serious criminal act but also pure election violence," Xu Luying, spokeswoman for the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of China's central government, said Thursday, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

China's state-run Global Times tabloid on Friday compared some student protesters at a recent university forum in the city to "radicals during the Cultural Revolution."

Global Times called the local students involved in the fracas "politically brainwashed, almost losing their ability of independent thinking" and suggested that one student had faked being pushed by a mainland student in order to instigate violence against the mainlander.

The nationalist tabloid warned that "Hong Kong is in decline" and that the city's universities would not continue to flourish without mainland support.