Minggu, 11 Agustus 2019

Hong Kong Protesters Battle Police, Despite Beijing’s Warnings - The Wall Street Journal

A protester throws a tear gas cannister fired by police in Hong Kong during a 10th consecutive weekend of unrest. Photo: manan vatsyayana/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
By
Natasha Khan,
Wenxin Fan and
Joyu Wang

HONG KONG—Protests across the city deteriorated into urban battle scenes in several different neighborhoods, as demonstrators defied stern warnings from Beijing and continued to take their message to the streets in often unpredictable directions during a 10th consecutive weekend of unrest.

Thousands of protesters Sunday descended on tourist destinations and residential neighborhoods alike, building metal barricades and some throwing bricks and what police identified as smoke bombs. Live footage showed at least one flaming projectile that appeared to be a Molotov cocktail. Police equipped with riot gear used tear gas to disperse crowds. Meanwhile, a peaceful sit-in at the airport continued into a third day.

The fluid nature of the increasingly violent protests presents a challenge for authorities and residents. In the Wan Chai district, outside the police headquarters, there was little out of the ordinary at 5 p.m. Sunday, with people enjoying drinks on a popular bar street. Just an hour later, protesters arrived and began building barricades and waving lasers at police. Soon, riot police fired multiple volleys of tear gas. Bars closed and hotels lowered their shutters, keeping guests inside for their safety.

Hong Kong police fire tear gas as protests continue to rock the city. Photo: Kin Cheung/Associated Press

The protests this summer reflect the outpouring of public anger at Hong Kong’s government, sparked by an extradition bill that would allow those in Hong Kong to be tried under mainland China’s opaque legal system. The Hong Kong government eventually shelved the bill, declaring it “dead,” but has yet to formally withdraw it.

The protest movement has maintained its momentum—fueled by frustrations with the government’s handling of the situation, allegations that police have used excessive force while dispersing protesters and demands for democratic overhauls—even as Beijing has signaled its growing intolerance for the dissent and local authorities have said the protracted tensions could plunge the city into a recession.

Clashes had been expected in North Point, an area populated with immigrants from Fujian province in southeast China and the site of a clash between protesters and stick-waving men a week before. In recent days, rumors of a similar confrontation spread on social media. Pro-China signs were posted Sunday on a main commercial street along with the occasional Chinese flag.

More than 10,000 Hokkien-speaking people live around North Point, forming a community that has supported China since the 1960s. It was a main clash point during a monthslong riot in 1967, when leftist Hongkongers with Beijing’s support clashed with the ruling British government.

On Saturday, representatives of the Fujian group held a rally and vowed to protect their adopted home. Chanting slogans in both Mandarin and Cantonese supporting the chief executive and the police, they chanted that violence needed to be stopped and chaos should end. In a speech Wednesday, China’s top official for Hong Kong affairs urged patriotic residents of the city to stand up to violent protesters.

Protesters shine laser pointers at a police station in Hong Kong, part of a series of demonstrations that have rocked the city for 10 consecutive weekends. Photo: jerome favre/Shutterstock

On Sunday, police officers and reporters gathered around a group of men in red T-shirts who said they were from Fujian. A few scuffles broke out between the red-shirted men and the reporters, with some local journalists getting in heated discussions. A scrum of press and the men briefly spilled from the sidewalk into the street amid pushing and shoving. But by 7 p.m. the protesters still hadn’t shown up.

At one point men chased a supposed protester down the street, as other men loitering in front of shuttered storefronts kicked and punched him. Dozens of police sought to contain the scuffles and appeared to detain one person. Several police vans were parked in the area.

As they had done Saturday, protesters Sunday spontaneously crowded around the entrance of a cross-harbor tunnel, letting vehicles go without paying toll fees. They appeared to have adopted suggestions from the chat groups frequented by protesters, after the blocking of a tunnel last on Monday annoyed other citizens.

The huge crowds of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators at the start of the summer have given way to smaller groups of mobile protests using more-aggressive tactics, such as lighting fires on roads and hurling objects toward police.

Police said Sunday they arrested 16 people the day before, on charges including for unlawful assembly. Hong Kong’s police said they have made nearly 600 arrests and fired more than 1,800 rounds of tear gas and at least 160 rubber bullets since the protests began two months before.

—John Lyons and Jon Emont contributed to this article.

Write to Natasha Khan at natasha.khan@wsj.com, Wenxin Fan at Wenxin.Fan@wsj.com and Joyu Wang at joyu.wang@wsj.com

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2019-08-11 12:14:00Z
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Hong Kong Protesters Clash with Police Amid Fears of Mob Violence - The New York Times

HONG KONG — Several districts of Hong Kong were again convulsed by mass demonstrations and street clashes on Sunday, amid concerns that local gangsters might try to assault protesters in a reprise of earlier violence.

The prospect of further street brawls between civilians lent a heightened sense of danger and uncertainty to protests that have continued for 10 consecutive weekends, prompted by fears about the erosion of civil liberties under Beijing’s rule in the semiautonomous Chinese territory.

Sunday’s civil disobedience began in the afternoon in Victoria Park, down the road from North Point, a traditionally pro-Communist neighborhood that has long been a stronghold for immigrants from the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian.

The rally, on Hong Kong Island, was authorized in advance by the police, and protesters had been expected to march east to North Point, the site of a mob attack last week. There was a heavy police presence in North Point on Sunday, and many stores there were shuttered.

But as the Victoria Park rally ended, many protesters instead headed west on a major thoroughfare, bringing traffic to a halt and leaving their next moves unclear.

Image
CreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times

“We no longer demonstrate based on a schedule, which I think works well,” said Dominic Chan, 26, a protester who works in retail. “We spread to different places, because every arrest means one less protester in the field.”

A few protesters later stopped at a square on the island’s waterfront whose main attraction is a golden statue of a bauhinia flower, an emblem of the city, and spray-painted the ground below with graffiti.

Others tried to approach the headquarters of the Hong Kong police, a target of earlier demonstrations, then retreated as officers charged at them and fired tear gas. The police said that protesters had thrown gasoline bombs and aimed laser pointers at officers in the area.

Officers also fired tear gas on Sunday at other groups of protesters in Sham Shui Po and Tsim Sha Tsui, two neighborhoods on the Kowloon peninsula, across the harbor from Hong Kong Island. The police had earlier rejected an application by protesters to hold a march there.

Video from Sham Shui Po showed police officers in riot gear charging at protesters and tackling one of them to the ground. The police said in a statement that protesters had been hurling bricks at officers, “posing a threat to the safety of everyone at scene.”

Image
CreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times

The protests began two months ago in opposition to legislation that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China, where the courts are controlled by the ruling Communist Party.

They have since spiraled into Hong Kong’s worst political crisis since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997, with protesters demanding the resignation of Hong Kong’s embattled chief executive, Carrie Lam, and demonstrations regularly ending in clashes with the police.

One of the movement’s biggest events this summer was last Monday, when a general strike and set of protest rallies disrupted businesses and transportation in a city known for its order and efficiency. That evening, a group of black-clad protesters were briefly attacked in North Point by men wearing white shirts and wielding sticks. Those men were widely believed to be members of local Fujianese gangs, although no conclusive proof of that has emerged.

The police made 148 arrests during the general strike on Monday, though they did not specify how many were linked to the North Point violence.

Ng Wun-yim, the chairman of the Hong Kong Federation of Fujian Associations, told reporters on Saturday that the associations had played no part in the street brawl on Monday, and that he had urged local Fujianese people to be “calm, restrained and not impulsive.”

Image
CreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times

“We don’t want to see violence,” he said. “Hong Kong is a civilized society.”

Still, one of his colleagues, Lo Man-tuen, said that local Fujianese would not hesitate to defend themselves if provoked.

The mob attack last week was reminiscent of another clash on July 21, in which a pro-Beijing mob beat protesters and bystanders in Yuen Long, a satellite town in northwestern Hong Kong that is not far from the Chinese mainland. North Point residents have been on edge since the fight on Monday, with stores closing early the next day amid rumors of further gang violence.

On Sunday, red banners around North Point urging Fujianese to “protect” their home had been plastered around the neighborhood, apparently by local residents.

Scuffles broke out in the neighborhood during the evening between some Fujianese men and journalists who were trying to film them.

Sunday was also the last day of a peaceful three-day demonstration at Hong Kong International Airport, one of the world’s busiest, for which protesters did not seek police permission.

There had been panic and widespread disruption in the city on Saturday as protesters hopscotched around the Kowloon side and the police fired tear gas in several locations. Smaller groups of demonstrators blocked a vital cross-harbor tunnel, barricaded a traffic intersection and set fires outside a police station in the Tsim Sha Tsui district.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/world/asia/hong-kong-protest.html

2019-08-11 11:19:03Z
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Europe isn't that scared of Boris Johnson - CNN

He hasn't been terribly subtle about this. During his campaign to replace Theresa May, Johnson repeatedly said that if he became prime minister, he would ramp up preparations for leaving the European Union without a deal.
The logic goes something like this: a no-deal Brexit will wreak havoc not only in the UK but in European countries as well. And having seen that Johnson is serious, Europe will eventually blink and renegotiate the deal it struck with May last year (and which has since been voted down three times by the UK Parliament).
Since taking office, Johnson hasn't exactly softened his approach. He brought a load of hardline Brexiteers into his cabinet and onto his team of advisors, and in the past few weeks, no deal has gone from something barely anyone believed could happen to arguably the most likely outcome.
But if the aim of all of this is too spook the EU, it isn't working. "Ever since article 50 was triggered, we knew no deal was a possibility. That's why we prepared for it long before the UK," an EU official told CNN.
Brussels certainly appears relaxed about all this. "The threat of a no deal won't get you anywhere with the EU," said Georgina Wright, a senior researcher at the Institute for Government. "Threats are not going to change their mind, only credible alternatives will."
The alternatives Wright is talking about refer to a specific section of the Brexit withdrawal agreement known as the Irish border backstop -- an insurance policy that is designed to prevent the return of a hard border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, which is part of the EU.
The UK can't even have a proper constitutional crisis
The backstop is the Brexiteers' single biggest problem with the existing deal, as it keeps the UK tied to the EU in some respects, preventing a clean break from the European Union, and therefore doesn't honor the result of the referendum.
The problem is that keeping the backstop in the deal is a red line for Ireland. As Wright points out, "unity of the 27 [EU countries] is the most important thing. It's why the EU is an incredibly powerful actor in negotiations with third actors." So, a red line for Ireland becomes a red line for the whole of the EU, and that's the end of that.
Johnson has formally made his hard position on the backstop clear to Europe. His top Brexit negotiators have already been to Brussels and said that getting rid of the backstop is, from London's perspective, the starting point of renegotiations. Otherwise the UK is leaving on October 31 without a deal.
But far from rattling Brussels, Johnson's absolutism appears to be having the reverse impact. When the European Parliament goes back to work in September, it's expected to pass a resolution reaffirming its commitment to the existing withdrawal agreement and restating its view that it's the only deal the UK is going to get.
The logical conclusion of this standoff is Johnson attending the European Council summit of EU leaders on October 17, no new deal being on the table, and Johnson refusing to request another Brexit extension to avoid a no-deal exit.
So, given the fact that lawmakers in Brussels accept that no deal will be bad for Europe as well as the UK, why aren't they in panic mode?
One reason is anger. Officials in the EU Commission are privately furious that Britain is trying to bully Ireland into requesting that changes are made. "The UK triggered article 50, the UK didn't accept our deal and only the UK can revoke article 50. Blaming us -- especially Ireland -- for a situation they created is outrageous," said the EU official.
They are also angry that Johnson and his government are trying to pin the blame for a lack of progress on Brussels. Michael Gove, one of Johnson's cabinet ministers, said this week that he was saddened that the EU was "refusing to negotiate with the UK."
Domino's is stockpiling pizza ingredients to protect against a disorderly Brexit
Another Brussels source with detailed knowledge of the negotiations said: "Boris is trying to ramp up the blame game, but we are not going to play along. Keep calm, keep united. That is our policy." While it might be tempting to lash out at the UK, the EU is instead focusing on sticking to its previously-stated position and not showing any cracks.
A second reason for the lack of panic is that people in Brussels take everything Johnson says with a pinch of salt. Johnson has previous form for sudden changes of heart, and no one is ruling out the possibility that, come the October 17 EU summit, he will request another Brexit extension if it suits him politically.
"For a very long time, they assumed that Boris Johnson would request an extension and make it sound like it's not his choice, but that he's being forced into it, either by his own Parliament or the EU," said Wright.
While this might sound like kamikaze politics for a man who has said he will deliver Brexit on October 31 "do or die", the political situation Britain might make another extension a preferable option to Johnson.
Johnson has a parliamentary majority of one. This makes him vulnerable to losing a vote of no confidence. And while bringing down his government wouldn't automatically stop a no-deal Brexit, it could trigger a series of events that leads to him requesting a Brexit extension.
Should Parliament topple the government, it becomes very likely that Johnson would have to call a general election. When that election would be has become one of the most talked-about issues in Britain and in Brussels. Some think that Johnson would call for an election after the Brexit date, meaning in theory that he can run the clock down to a no-deal Brexit with nothing in his way.
UK economy shrinks for first time since 2012. Brexit could tip it into recession
The thing is, if no deal really is as catastrophic as some have predicted, then it's hard to see how that would help Johnson during an election campaign. At that point, he would own no deal.
If he loses a confidence vote, however, Johnson could theoretically play another card. He could request an extension, then immediately unleash hell on the people who made him do it -- the majority of Parliament who do not want to leave without a deal. That could turn a general election into be a fight between the people who "stole" Brexit and the man who, with a bigger majority in Parliament, would finally get the job done.
"It's no secret here that we think an election is inevitable," said the Brussels source. "All of this blame game rhetoric is probably for a domestic audience rather than for us."
Should that happen and should Johnson win a parliamentary majority, then expect to see the language harden. Johnson will have a mandate to deliver a no-deal Brexit and he will have the majority to do it. He will probably revert to his plan of trying to scare Brussels into making concessions.
In the meantime, the inescapable reality is that the EU thinks it is ready for no deal and is almost out of patience with a UK that it feels it has bent over backwards to help. And should we reach that point, it might not be the officials in Brussels that fear the outcome of a no deal. Boris Johnson has some big decisions to make and not much time to make them in.

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/10/europe/europe-isnt-scared-of-boris-johnson-analysis-intl-gbr/index.html

2019-08-11 06:59:00Z
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Sabtu, 10 Agustus 2019

Tens of thousands rally at election protest in Moscow - Aljazeera.com

Tens of thousands of people demanding free elections have rallied in Russia's capital, Moscow, in one of the country's biggest political protests in recent years.

Protesters gathered on Saturday at the central Prospekt Andreya Sakharova street for their fourth consecutive weekend demonstration over the exclusion of opposition and independent candidates from the Moscow city council ballot.

Some carried placards with slogans such as "Give us the right to vote!" and "You've lied to us enough," while others held up pictures of activists arrested at earlier protests.

"I'm outraged by this injustice at every level. They're not letting candidates stand who have collected all the necessary signatures. They are arresting people who are protesting peacefully," said one protester, Irina Dargolts, a 60-year-old engineer.

The White Counter, an NGO that tracks participants in rallies, counted 49,900 people, while Moscow police gave a much lower attendance figure of 20,000.

Moscow officials authorised Saturday's rally, unlike last weekend when police detained more than 1,000 people, sometimes violently, at an unauthorised demonstration.

'Provocation'

Hours before the protest, police detained a leading opposition activist, Lyubov Sobol, who is on a hunger strike to protest denied a place on the ballot.

Masked men raided her office and the police said they had information she and other activists were plotting a "provocation" at Saturday's rally. A video on Sobol's Twitter feed showed officers breaking into her office as she demanded an explanation for their actions.

"I won't make it to the rally but you know what to do without me," she wrote on Twitter.

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Sobol is an ally of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is serving a 30-day prison sentence for breaking a protest law in July. 

Most opposition candidates banned from participating in the Moscow election have now been jailed for violating protest laws.

One of the speakers at the rally was the wife of opposition politician Dmitry Gudkov, who is serving a 30-day sentence.

"Each of us has the right to run for office and they are very afraid of that," said Valeriya Gudkova.

"We have real support from the public and they just have criminals in their electoral commissions."

Victor Olevich of the Moscow-based think-tank, Centre of Actual Politics, told Al Jazeera that previous police crackdowns on protests appear to have been counterproductive as the number of people attending the protests has increased.

"[The number of protesters] matters because the more protesters attend these events, the more influence protesters are going to have to reach some sort of a compromise with the authorities," Olevich said.

"[A] compromise may include changes to city election laws that ... would make sure that in the next election cycles, this is not repeated," she said. 

"We are going to see in the next few weeks and months what that compromise is going to look like."

Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen reporting from Moscow said that protesters are now also demonstrating against "the crackdown, the repression that authorities committed after the protests started.

"Thousands have been detained and some people are facing very serious criminal charges and years in prison for what human rights organisations call peaceful protests," Vaessen said.

"People are really fed up; that's why they're here to show to the government that they are having a right to protest."

Some opposition figures called for an unauthorised march to follow Saturday's permitted rally.

"After the demonstration, we're going for a walk round Moscow," Navalny's team wrote on social media. 

But police in Moscow issued a warning against the move, saying unsanctioned protests would be "immediately halted".

Russian activists say more than 200 people have been arrested in the country. OVD-Info, a monitoring body, said 146 people were arrested at Saturday's demonstration in Moscow and 86 in St Petersburg. A small number of other arrests also took place in other cities.

Saturday's protest came as authorities mounted their harshest attack yet on Navalny's team, focusing on his anti-corruption foundation which publishes investigations of officials close to President Vladimir Putin.

Investigators raided the foundation's office on Thursday as part of an inquiry into alleged acceptance of donations of laundered money and a court froze the foundation's accounts.

"This is the most aggressive attempt yet to gag us," Navalny wrote in a blog entry he issued through lawyers. 

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2019-08-10 17:25:00Z
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Hong Kong’s Protesters Test Riot Police With Cat-and-Mouse Tactics - The Wall Street Journal

Protesters squared off with police in the Tai Wei area of Hong Kong, where some blocked roads before police fired tear gas. Photo: Billy H.C. Kwok/Getty Images
By
Jon Emont,
Wenxin Fan and
Joyu Wang

HONG KONG—Protesters led riot police on a game of cat and mouse, splitting up and moving throughout the city and blocking traffic, as Hong Kong’s summer of dissent stretched into a 10th weekend.

Hundreds of families gathered near Victoria Harbour to call for Hong Kong’s democratic values to be protected from Beijing’s growing influence, as nearby a pro-Beijing group led supporters to a police station, carrying cards to thank officers for their work in dealing with the protests. At the city’s international airport, protesters packed the arrivals hall and greeted passengers with a peaceful sit-in for a second day.

Clashes broke out by the early evening, as small groups of protesters wearing gas masks blocked roads and tunnels at several spots, before being chased away by police officers with riot shields. Police fired tear gas to disperse them.

Demonstrations in Hong Kong against an extradition bill have morphed and spread into increasingly violent protests about the encroaching authoritarianism of Beijing. Can this semiautonomous city remain an attractive financial hub for international companies? Photo composite: Sharon Shi

At the Tai Wai metro station, in the north of the city, protesters blocked roads with barricades before police fired the first rounds of tear gas. Not long after, hundreds of protesters rushed into the city’s cross-harbor tunnel, scattering traffic cones, trash cans and metal barricades to disrupt traffic, before dispersing.

As protesters quickly disappeared from the busy tourist area of Tsim Sha Tsui, one post on a popular protester forum cheered the action as a successful tactic. “Let’s be water and keep so,” it said.

A Tsim Sha Tsui resident who saw the confrontation between police and protesters said the government had been useless and arrogant. The 50-year-old woman, who originally came from mainland China, said she doesn’t support either side, though she feels bad for the protesters. “I felt heartbroken. They are all young people. And now their future got ruined.”

“Everyone’s been having a tough time,” she said.

Demonstrators held a sit-in for a second day at the city’s international airport. Photo: issei kato/Reuters

The protests this summer reflect the outpouring of public anger at Hong Kong’s government, sparked by an extradition bill that would make it easier for Beijing to prosecute Hong Kong citizens under mainland China’s opaque legal system. The Hong Kong government eventually shelved the bill, declaring it “dead,” but it has yet to formally withdraw it. Frustrations with the government’s handling of the situation, allegations that police have used excessive force while dispersing protesters and demands for democratic overhauls have sustained the protest movement, even as Beijing has signaled its growing intolerance for the dissent.

The huge crowds of hundreds of thousands of protesters at the start of the summer have given way to smaller groups of mobile protests using more-aggressive tactics, such as lighting fires on roads and hurling objects toward police.

Last week, Beijing officials said they strongly supported the actions of Hong Kong police in trying to end the chaos, and asked patriotic citizens in the city to stand up against protesters as well.

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Write to Jon Emont at jonathan.emont@wsj.com, Wenxin Fan at Wenxin.Fan@wsj.com and Joyu Wang at joyu.wang@wsj.com

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2019-08-10 14:50:00Z
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Hong Kong Protesters Defy Beijing Warnings, as Police Fire Tear Gas - The New York Times

HONG KONG — Defying warnings from China of a crackdown if they continued more than two months of protests, young demonstrators blocked a vital tunnel under Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor on Saturday, barricaded a traffic intersection and set fires outside a police station in a shopping district popular with tourists.

The Hong Kong police force said in a statement that the fires in the Tsim Sha Tsui district of the city posed “a serious threat to the safety of everyone at the scene.”

Police officers fired tear gas in several locations as a day that began with a show of peaceful defiance outside the headquarters of China’s military garrison descended into an evening of clashes, panic and widespread disruption.

Image
CreditJerome Favre/EPA, via Shutterstock

Thousands of activists continued a sit-in at Hong Kong’s international airport, one of the world’s busiest air-travel hubs, on the second day of what they said would be a three-day occupation. The airport demonstration, unlike scattered and often-chaotic protests on the Kowloon Peninsula on Saturday evening, has so far been peaceful.

Stores along Nathan Road, normally crowded with evening shoppers and tourists, closed their doors as the police moved into the area, charging into passers-by caught up in a melee that was shrouded in clouds of tear gas.

Amy Havart, a 32-year-old Hong Kong resident, said she had been leaving a hotel on Nathan Road after drinks with friends when hotel staff members “told us that the police are dropping tear gas outside; we don’t know what is happening at all.”

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CreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times

She said she could not see any protesters or acts of violence so could not understand why there were so many police officers.

“We are all just here trying to have some fun tonight. So why are the police here?” she asked. “I don’t know what is happening to this city. This is just heartbreaking to see.”

[What’s going on in Hong Kong? Here’s how the protests have evolved.]

Assailed for days by China’s propaganda machine as violent thugs who must be stopped, Hong Kong’s protest movement — a largely leaderless jumble of groups and causes — started the day with a display of what activists say was their peaceful intent. Several thousand people marched in an orderly procession past China’s military headquarters in the former British colony.

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CreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times

That protest march in Central District, billed by organizers as a “family friendly” event, featured parents, baby strollers and children with balloons, and avoided incendiary slogans about “retaking Hong Kong” that have angered China’s governing Communist Party.

“Xi Jinping should come and take a look at us here, now, and then say whether we are hooligans,” said Ina Wong, a 34-year-old designer, referring to China’s hard-line leader. Ms. Wong took part in the rally along with her husband, a civil servant, and their 2-year-old son.

But the mood turned grimmer as darkness fell and the Kowloon Peninsula, across Victoria Harbor, became the focus for a new round of protests, which, unlike the morning rally in Central, had not been authorized by the police.

Image
CreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times

The number of protesters was far below the huge demonstrations last month, and Saturday evening’s events in Kowloon were driven largely by groups of a few hundred activists who roamed from area to area in an effort to avoid arrest for participation in an unauthorized gathering. After one group blocked a tunnel under the harbor from Kowloon to Central in the early evening, a different group occupied the entrance to the Lion Rock Tunnel, under a mountain in Kowloon.

The blocking of roads and tunnels recalled some of the disarray that convulsed Hong Kong on Monday, when a wave of protest rallies and strikes bought much of the city to a standstill, with the police and demonstrators clashing in several areas. Monday’s unrest prompted a barrage of warnings from the Communist Party in Beijing and its allies in Hong Kong that further unrest would not be tolerated.

On Saturday, party-controlled newspapers in Hong Kong published what they said was an open letter signed by more than 700 patriotic residents voicing support for the city’s police, whom protesters have accused of brutality, and demanding that the local government “swiftly stop this chaotic situation.”

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CreditAnthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The letter, and a series of small counterprotests in support of the government, followed a demand this past week from Beijing’s top official responsible for Hong Kong that China’s supporters there speak out against the protest movement and mobilize to resist any concessions to its demands.

Those demands include the resignation of Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, as well as an independent inquiry into the police’s conduct and the full withdrawal of the extradition bill that sparked the protests.

China’s characterization of the Hong Kong protests as “turmoil” — the word it used to describe protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989 — has fueled rumors that another crackdown was being planned. But few expect China to send in the People’s Liberation Army, as it did to crush the student-led Tiananmen movement 30 years ago.

Watched by a lone Chinese soldier with an assault rifle guarding the gate to China’s military compound in Central, the morning protesters marched without incident past the garrison, shouting, “Go Hong Kong! Go Hong Kong! Fathers and mothers please preserve our future!”

They ended their parade outside the offices of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, a body that helped to spur the protest movement by moving in June to adopt legislation that would allow extradition to mainland China. Mrs. Lam, the chief executive, has since suspended the bill, but she has resisted demands that it be formally withdrawn.

Many in Hong Kong are not willing to accept Mrs. Lam’s assurances that the bill is “dead.”

“People don’t trust the government. This is the main problem,” said Ken Lin, an unemployed 39-year-old office worker who helped organize the Saturday march. “The government only obeys Beijing, not what the people of Hong Kong want.”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/10/world/asia/hong-kong-protests.html

2019-08-10 14:41:53Z
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Hong Kong Protesters Defy Beijing Warnings, as Police Fire Tear Gas - The New York Times

HONG KONG — Defying warnings from China of a crackdown if they continued more than two months of protests, young demonstrators blocked a vital tunnel under Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor on Saturday, barricaded a traffic intersection and set fires outside a police station in a shopping district popular with tourists.

The Hong Kong police force said in a statement that the fires in the Tsim Sha Tsui district of the city posed “a serious threat to the safety of everyone at the scene.”

Police officers fired tear gas in several locations as a day that began with a show of peaceful defiance outside the headquarters of China’s military garrison descended into an evening of clashes, panic and widespread disruption.

Image
CreditJerome Favre/EPA, via Shutterstock

Thousands of activists continued a sit-in at Hong Kong’s international airport, one of the world’s busiest air-travel hubs, on the second day of what they said would be a three-day occupation. The airport demonstration, unlike scattered and often-chaotic protests on the Kowloon Peninsula on Saturday evening, has so far been peaceful.

Stores along Nathan Road, normally crowded with evening shoppers and tourists, closed their doors as the police moved into the area, charging into passers-by caught up in a melee that was shrouded in clouds of tear gas.

Amy Havart, a 32-year-old Hong Kong resident, said she had been leaving a hotel on Nathan Road after drinks with friends when hotel staff members “told us that the police are dropping tear gas outside; we don’t know what is happening at all.”

Image
CreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times

She said she could not see any protesters or acts of violence so could not understand why there were so many police officers.

“We are all just here trying to have some fun tonight. So why are the police here?” she asked. “I don’t know what is happening to this city. This is just heartbreaking to see.”

[What’s going on in Hong Kong? Here’s how the protests have evolved.]

Assailed for days by China’s propaganda machine as violent thugs who must be stopped, Hong Kong’s protest movement — a largely leaderless jumble of groups and causes — started the day with a display of what activists say was their peaceful intent. Several thousand people marched in an orderly procession past China’s military headquarters in the former British colony.

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CreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times

That protest march in Central District, billed by organizers as a “family friendly” event, featured parents, baby strollers and children with balloons, and avoided incendiary slogans about “retaking Hong Kong” that have angered China’s governing Communist Party.

“Xi Jinping should come and take a look at us here, now, and then say whether we are hooligans,” said Ina Wong, a 34-year-old designer, referring to China’s hard-line leader. Ms. Wong took part in the rally along with her husband, a civil servant, and their 2-year-old son.

But the mood turned grimmer as darkness fell and the Kowloon Peninsula, across Victoria Harbor, became the focus for a new round of protests, which, unlike the morning rally in Central, had not been authorized by the police.

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CreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times

The number of protesters was far below the huge demonstrations last month, and Saturday evening’s events in Kowloon were driven largely by groups of a few hundred activists who roamed from area to area in an effort to avoid arrest for participation in an unauthorized gathering. After one group blocked a tunnel under the harbor from Kowloon to Central in the early evening, a different group occupied the entrance to the Lion Rock Tunnel, under a mountain in Kowloon.

The blocking of roads and tunnels recalled some of the disarray that convulsed Hong Kong on Monday, when a wave of protest rallies and strikes bought much of the city to a standstill, with the police and demonstrators clashing in several areas. Monday’s unrest prompted a barrage of warnings from the Communist Party in Beijing and its allies in Hong Kong that further unrest would not be tolerated.

On Saturday, party-controlled newspapers in Hong Kong published what they said was an open letter signed by more than 700 patriotic residents voicing support for the city’s police, whom protesters have accused of brutality, and demanding that the local government “swiftly stop this chaotic situation.”

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CreditAnthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The letter, and a series of small counterprotests in support of the government, followed a demand this past week from Beijing’s top official responsible for Hong Kong that China’s supporters there speak out against the protest movement and mobilize to resist any concessions to its demands.

Those demands include the resignation of Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, as well as an independent inquiry into the police’s conduct and the full withdrawal of the extradition bill that sparked the protests.

China’s characterization of the Hong Kong protests as “turmoil” — the word it used to describe protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989 — has fueled rumors that another crackdown was being planned. But few expect China to send in the People’s Liberation Army, as it did to crush the student-led Tiananmen movement 30 years ago.

Watched by a lone Chinese soldier with an assault rifle guarding the gate to China’s military compound in Central, the morning protesters marched without incident past the garrison, shouting, “Go Hong Kong! Go Hong Kong! Fathers and mothers please preserve our future!”

They ended their parade outside the offices of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, a body that helped to spur the protest movement by moving in June to adopt legislation that would allow extradition to mainland China. Mrs. Lam, the chief executive, has since suspended the bill, but she has resisted demands that it be formally withdrawn.

Many in Hong Kong are not willing to accept Mrs. Lam’s assurances that the bill is “dead.”

“People don’t trust the government. This is the main problem,” said Ken Lin, an unemployed 39-year-old office worker who helped organize the Saturday march. “The government only obeys Beijing, not what the people of Hong Kong want.”

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CreditJerome Favre/EPA, via Shutterstock

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/10/world/asia/hong-kong-protests.html

2019-08-10 14:41:52Z
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