Hundreds of protesters return to HK streets
HONG KONG (Reuters) — Hong Kong’s metro system stayed shut yesterday, paralyzing transport in the Asian financial hub after a night of chaos in which police shot a teenage boy and prodemocracy protesters torched businesses and metro stations.
Friday’s protests across the Chineseruled city erupted hours after its embattled leader, Carrie Lam, invoked colonialera emergency powers for the first time in more than 50 years to ban the face masks demonstrators use to hide their identities.
The night’s “extreme violence” justified the use of the emergency law, Beijingbacked Lam said in a television address yesterday.
“The radical behavior of rioters took Hong Kong through a very dark night, leaving society today half-paralyzed,” she said in pre-recorded remarks.
“The extreme violence clearly illustrated that Hong Kong’s public safety is widely endangered. That’s the concrete reason that we had to invoke emergency law yesterday to introduce the anti-mask law.”
But undeterred by the ban and transport shutdown, several hundred protesters, many wearing masks, took to the streets yesterday, marching through the bustling central district of Causeway Bay, with more protests planned through the weekend.
“We’re not sure what is going to happen later, but we felt we had to get out and show our basic right to wear a mask,” said one protester, Sue, 22, who wore a black mask and dark glasses.
“The government needs to learn it can’t squeeze Hong Kong people like this.”
The increasingly violent demonstrations that have roiled the city for four months began in opposition to a bill introduced in April that would have allowed extradition to mainland China, but they have since spiraled into a broader prodemocracy movement.
MTR Corp. said its network, which carries about five million passengers each day, would remain suspended, while shopping malls and supermarkets also closed, in a new blow for retailers and restaurants in a city on the edge of recession.
“As we are no longer in a position to provide safe and reliable service to passengers in the circumstances, the corporation had no choice but to make the decision to suspend the service of its entire network,” it said in a statement.