Police fire tear gas into subway station
HONG KONG » Hong Kong was convulsed by mass demonstrations and chaos for a second straight day Sunday, as police fired tear gas into a subway station and authorities accused protesters of attacking officers with gasoline bombs.
The unrest in several downtown districts came in the 10th weekend of protests in the semiautonomous Chinese territory and capped a week in which the protest movement mounted its fiercest resistance yet to Beijing’s rule of the former British colony.
The chaos and uncertainty, in which the police said some protesters threw gasoline bombs at them, came six days after a general strike and street clashes brought much of the financial hub to a rare standstill.
Those demonstrations prompted Beijing to sternly warn the protesters not to test its resolve and to warn of retribution from the “sword of law.”
Top Chinese officials have said the demonstrations “have the clear characteristics of a color revolution,” a reference to uprisings in the former Soviet bloc that Beijing believes drew inspiration from the United States, and they accused a U.S. diplomat without evidence of being a “black hand” bent on stirring chaos in the territory.
For now at least, protesters seem determined to keep pressing their broad demands for greater democracy, in part by using flash-mob-style tactics on the streets that keep the authorities guessing their next move.
The Hong Kong police, meanwhile, appear increasingly eager to clear away the crowds and spray tear gas in residential neighborhoods and popular shopping and night-life districts even as those tactics outrage residents and help the protesters’ argument that the police force has gone rogue.
The use of gasoline bombs by protesters, which has been fairly rare all summer in Sunday’s unrest suggested a possible escalation in the movement’s tactics.
The civil disobedience began in the afternoon with a peaceful rally in Victoria Park on Hong Kong Island that had been authorized by the police. The protesters had been expected to march east from the park to nearby North Point, a traditionally pro-Beijing neighborhood and the site of a mob attack on protesters last week.
Instead, the protesters headed in the opposite direction along a major thoroughfare, bringing traffic to a halt and leaving their next moves unclear.