Hong Kong activists vow more protests
Pro-china bill spurs government blockade
HONG KONG — After a day of sitins, tear gas and clashes with police, Hong Kong students and civil rights activists vowed Wednesday to keep protesting a proposed extradition bill that has become a lightning rod for concerns over greater Chinese control and erosion of civil liberties in the former British colony.
The violence marked an escalation of the biggest political crisis in years for the semiautonomous Chinese territory and forced the delay of legislative debate on the bill.
College student Louis Wong said he considered the blockade of government headquarters and the Legislative Council a success because it appeared to prevent Beijing loyalists from advancing amendments to a pair of laws that would make it easier to send suspects to China.
“This is a public space, and the police have no right to block us from staying here,” Wong said, surveying a garbage-strewn intersection in the Admiralty neighborhood that had been blocked off by security forces after protesters broke through a police cordon and entered the government complex.
“We’ll stay until the government drops this law and (Chinese President) Xi Jinping gives up on trying to turn Hong Kong into just another city in China like Beijing and Shanghai,” he said.
Protesters who had massed outside the government building overnight Tuesday began pressing against the police Wednesday, leading to police firing tear gas and pepper spray.
A weekend protest of the extradition measure drew hundreds of thousands of people, and Hong
Kong leader Carrie Lam said in a statement early Thursday that the peaceful rally had become a “blatant, organized riot.”
At a news conference held as the chaos swirled outside on Wednesday afternoon, Police Commissioner Stephen Lo Wai-chung said the “serious clashes” forced police to use pepper spray, bean bag rounds, rubber bullets, and tear gas. Officers were hurt, some seriously, by rocks, bottles, traffic cones, metal barricades and other items thrown by protesters.
At least 72 people were brought to seven hospitals, with two in serious condition, the Hong Kong Hospital Authority said. Of those, 41 were later released, it added.