Pro-Beijing mob attacks Hong Kong protesters

DOZENS INJURED

HONG KONG • Pro-democracy lawmaker Lam Cheukting was in a subway station near his constituency on Sunday night responding to reports of a violent mob in the area. Suddenly, dozens more of the white-shirted men appeared, surrounding the station.

Armed with bats, batons and wooden rods attached to Chinese flags, they chased protesters returning from a largely peaceful antigovernment march into a subway train and around the station.

As they kicked, hit and punched people, commuters pleaded for mercy and hid behind umbrellas. One witness said several women were wailing and hyperventilating in fear, some separated from their family members.

Video shared with The Washington Post showed the men beating people with sticks so violently that they fell to the ground, clutching injured limbs. Chinese flags that had fallen from the sticks littered the floor. Surgical face masks and tissues drenched in blood lay abandoned on subway cars.

“There were so many passengers, so many ordinary people,” said Lam, speaking by telephone from a hospital where he was recovering from broken fingers, a deep gash near his mouth and other injuries to his arms and body. He could not remember how many had surrounded and pummeled him, but he said they were using vulgar language and telling people to stay away from the Yuen Long neighbourhood.

The scenes marked an unprecedented level of violence against protesters during a political crisis that has gripped Hong Kong this summer. Those protests began in response to a now-suspended Hong Kong government proposal to allow extraditions to mainland China, but they have since swollen into a pro-autonomy movement calling for greater democracy and an inquiry into police violence, as well as the complete withdrawal of the extradition bill and the resignation of Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed leader.

The mob attacks on protesters late Sunday provoked widespread anger across Hong Kong. They also raised questions about the responsiveness of police, who arrived at Yuen Long station only after the mob had left, more than an hour and a half after the first emergency calls. They made no immediate arrests. Later, police said Monday night they arrested two men involved in the Yuen Long attacks and charged them with illegal assembly.

Police Commissioner Stephen Lo said in a news conference Monday that his force had been busy responding to protests on Hong Kong island, about 32 kilometres away, and was short-staffed.

“We will review our manpower deployment and do our best to ensure public order and public safety in every district of Hong Kong,” he said.

By early Monday, 45 men and women had been admitted to hospitals around Yuen Long in the New Territories area, close to the border with mainland China, some in critical condition. Among them was a pregnant woman who was knocked to the ground, a chef who suffered multiple gashes to his back, journalists and a member of the pro-democracy group Demosisto founded by activist Joshua Wong, according to local media reports, witnesses and the group.

The lawmakers and others attributed the attacks to organized crime groups that operate in China and Hong Kong, known as triads.

Lo did not dispute a reporter’s characterization that the attacks were the work of triads but said there was no co-operation between police and the attackers.

Hong Kong was promised a high degree of autonomy when China reclaimed sovereignty over the former British colony in 1997. But in recent years, concerns have grown that an increasingly powerful Beijing is asserting its influence in Hong Kong and gradually eroding the city’s relative freedoms and rule of law.