Hong Kong airport disruption deepens
Flights leaving Hong Kong were disrupted for a second day on Tuesday, plunging the city deeper into turmoil as its stock market fell to a sevenmonth low, and its leader said it had been pushed into a state of panic and chaos.
Ten weeks of increasingly violent protests have roiled the Asian financial hub as thousands chafe at a perceived erosion of freedoms and autonomy under Chinese rule.
The protests, which China likened to terrorism, present President Xi Jinping with one of his biggest challenges since he came to power in 2012.
Check-in operations were suspended at 4.30pm on Tuesday, a day after an unprecedented airport shutdown, as thousands of protesters jammed the terminal, chanting, singing and waving banners.
“Take a minute to look at our city, our home,” CEO Carrie Lam said, her voice cracking, at a news conference in the government headquarters, which is fortified behind 1.8m-high water-filled barricades.
“Can we bear to push it into the abyss and see it smashed to pieces?”
The protests began as opposition to a now-suspended bill that would have allowed suspects’ extradition to mainland China, but have swelled into wider calls for democracy.
“Sorry for the inconvenience, we are fighting for the future of our home,” read one protest banner at the airport.
Demonstrators say they are fighting the erosion of the “one country, two systems” arrangement that enshrined some autonomy for Hong Kong since China took it back from Britain in 1997.
They want Lam to resign. She said that she would stay. “My responsibility goes beyond this particular range of protest,” Lam said, adding that the violence had pushed the territory into a state of “panic and chaos”. “I, as the chief executive, will be responsible to rebuild the economy, to engage as widely as possible, listen as attentively as possible to my people’s grievances and try to help Hong Kong to move on.”
As she spoke, the Hang Seng index slid more than 2%, dragging down markets across Asia.
Airport authorities suspended check-in operations as the fifth day of a sit-in by protesters grew increasingly heated.
“Terminal operations at Hong Kong International Airport have been seriously disrupted as a result of the public assembly at the airport,” the airport authority said. –