‘For all those arrested, we must right this injustice. No way back’
Escapees from the PolyU siege tell of their ordeal and why they won’t give in
DESPERATE, traumatised and hungry after days locked in Hong Kong’s last besieged university, the young woman in her 20s looked down into the narrow pipes of the sewers. The smell of effluent was not enough to put her off a last-ditch bid for freedom. Riot police were closing in after students fortified the Hong Kong Polytechnic University campus, now a totem of pro-democracy protests which have shaken the city for months.
For the woman known as “K”, who asked The Sunday Telegraph not to reveal her identity, there was no other choice. Clad in the all-black uniform of protesters, with a mask for good measure, she disappeared through the manhole, and risked her life crawling through a fetid, cockroach-infested sewer rather than surrender. “I knew the sewers would be dangerous and very smelly. I was worried about the water level, but the alternative to this was to be captured by the police. I had to try this,” she said.
For days, the sprawling Kowloon campus had been shrouded in choking tear gas and smoke from burning barricades, as thousands of protesters used crude petrol bombs, bows and arrows, and hastily constructed sling shots to prevent riot officers from entering the university premises.
K wept as she recalled the casualties from rubber bullets and beanbag rounds. “What I remember the most is the children who got injured, on their eyes, and on their heads. I saw a pool of blood on the ground. I was mostly concerned about the children, but I wondered if I would be next,” she said.
The police advanced with water cannon, and sealed exits. On Sunday evening, they issued an ultimatum to leave the PolyU campus by 10pm or be charged with rioting, a crime that carries a jail term of up to 10 years. Panic set in among the protesters. K and her companions looked up plans for the underground sewer system, hoping to find an exit. Armed with torches, they lowered themselves into the pitch black passageway. “There was dirty water and cockroaches. It was pungent and very cramped. There was only room for one person to pass at a time, and for bigger people, it was very hard to get inside,” said K.
They soon got lost. “We tried crawling for 20 minutes, but we could only go for 10-20 metres and had to come back out,” she said. Others who attempted the journey became disorientated or got injured and had to be rescued by the fire brigade.
K and a male companion, who called himself “A”, said they kept in touch with their worried parents while they were trapped. “My parents kept telling me, just don’t die” said A.
Neither were willing to reveal their escape route for fear of jeopardising the chances of the several dozen still concealed deep inside the trashed campus to eventually bypass the police. More than 1,000 people have been arrested this week in connection with the siege.
On Friday, at least eight exhausted protesters finally surrendered. On the same day, Chris Tang, the police commissioner, said he hoped for a peaceful resolution to the deadlock. “We do not have any deadline,” he said. “We hope that those inside will come out because the conditions are becoming increasingly unsafe.”
K and A described food shortages and rotting, smelly leftovers in the canteen. Debris, including helmets and goggles, remain strewn among glass shards on charred ground. Shower blocks are flooded from clogged drains, and stained with blue chemicals fired from water cannons. Darren Mann, a Hong Kong surgeon who treated the injured last week, described the situation at the university as a “humanitarian crisis”.
K and A suggested the protest movement would have to shift tactics to avoid a similar crisis. But they vowed to continue their fight for democracy. “For all the protesters who were arrested, for their sake, we have to right this injustice,” said A. “PolyU took so many casualties,” added K. “There’s simply no way of going back.”