Hong Kong vigils for dead student turn to street clashes
HONG KONG — Candlelight Hong Kong vigils mourning a student who died on Friday after a high fall during a pro-democracy rally quickly spiraled into street fires and cat-and-mouse clashes between pro-democracy protesters and police.
The center of violence appeared to be on Nathan Road, in the Kowloon district of Mong Kok, one of the most densely populated locations in the world, where activists built barricades and trashed an entrance to the metro station.
Police used a robot to try to detonate a suspected explosive device on a side street after at least three blasts in the area amid a standoff with petrolbomb throwing protesters for hours.
Chow Tsz-lok, who studied at the University of Science and Technology (UST), fell on Monday from the third to the second floor of a parking lot when protesters were being dispersed by police. It was the first student death in months of rallies.
Chow, 22, died on graduation day for many UST students. His death is likely to fuel anger at police, who are under pressure over accusations of excessive force as the former British colony grapples with its worst political crisis in decades.
UST students trashed a campus branch of Starbucks, part of a franchise perceived to be proBeijing, and rallies are expected across the territory over the weekend.
“Condemn police brutality,” they wrote on the restaurant’s glass wall.
Hundreds of students, most in masks and carrying candles, then lined up in silence at UST to lay white flowers in tribute.
Thousands also left flowers at the spot where he fell at the car park in Tseung Kwan O, to the east of the Kowloon peninsula, occasionally singing hymns.
In the shopping district of Causeway Bay, hundreds lined the streets in silence, with the eerie hum of the city in the background.
Then the mood changed. People started shouting abuse at “black police”, referring to perceived brutality, and blocked streets in Causeway Bay.
In Mong Kok, dozens of activists barricaded off Nathan Road, which leads to the harbor to the south. They vandalized a closed metro entrance, throwing in bricks and pouring oil through the metal grill, and destroyed a phone booth in a small explosion. There were clashes and fires in the New Territories town of Sha Tin.
In Tseung Kwan O, where people had been leaving flowers and silently crying for hours, people screamed encouragement and abuse after a traffic light was set on fire.
Chow’s friend and fellow UST student, Ben, 25, said the computer science undergraduate liked playing netball and basketball.