Pro-Beijing politician wounded in HK attack

HONG KONG (AFP) — A firebrand pro-Beijing politician in Hong Kong was wounded in a knife attack on Wednesday, the latest tit-for-tat political violence to break out in a city engulfed by months of pro-democracy protests.

Video posted online showed the moment the attack took place.

A man holding a bouquet of flowers approached Junius Ho on Wednesday morning as the politician was campaigning with party members in his constituency of Tuen Mun, a town on the outskirts of Hong Kong near the border with China.

The man gave Ho the flowers, asked to take a picture and then pulled a knife from his bag before striking his victim in the chest.

Ho and his aides quickly subdued the man who could be heard shouting in Cantonese: “Junius Ho, you scum!”

Police said three people were wounded in the incident, including the attacker.

A police source, who declined to be named, told AFP that Ho received a stab wound to the left side of his chest and the attacker was arrested.

Ho, 57, was conscious when he got into the ambulance.

Alongside Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam and police chief Stephen Lo, Ho has become one of the most loathed establishment figures among democracy protesters.

He has long been one of the most stridently pro-Beijing politicians in the city.

But he shot to notoriety on 21 July after he was filmed shaking hands with a group of men in the town of Yuen Long who went on to beat protesters with sticks and poles, hospitalizing 40 people.

He has delivered multiple speeches supporting Hong Kong’s police force and echoing Beijing’s condemnations of protesters, often using incendiary language.

Last month he accused a prominent opposition lawmaker of “eating foreign sausage” because she is married to a British journalist.