Hong Kong demonstrators marked an annual festival by gathering at local police stations to denounce the heavy-handed tactics officers used against protesters at the city’s international airport over the weekend.
Activists aimed laser pointers at a police station and chanted “an eye for an eye,” a reference to the woman who suffered a severe eye injury after being shot with a beanbag gun at close range. Police fired tear gas at the assembly, but protesters returned to the site about an hour later while leading activists called for international support.
“World leaders must stand up for HK,” Joshua Wong, a prominent young activist, tweeted Wednesday. “Please urge Beijing not to send troops to HK suppress on HKers who fight for freedom and free election.”
That persistence makes clear the protests have not ended, even though riot police succeeded in clearing Hong Kong International Airport of a mass sit-in that unfolded over several days and led to hundreds of flight cancellations. But the protesters adopted a chastened posture, embarrassed by attacks on an employee with China’s state-owned Global Times and another mainland Chinese man suspected of being an undercover Chinese security official.
“What happened on Tuesday is not perfect but it does not mean that the sit-in is officially terminated,” organizers wrote in a Telegram message, the South China Morning Post reported. “What we need to do now is to look forward, to maintain confidence in ourselves and our peers, to reflect on our deeds, and to believe that we will perform better next time.”
The clashes delivered a public relations setback for the protesters, one that perhaps reflects a lack of clear leadership in a movement that coalesced in response to the Beijing-backed local government’s attempt to pass an extradition bill that would allow Hong Kong residents to be seized by mainland authorities based on flimsy evidence.
“Some of them believe, like Chairman Mao said, ‘If you’re going to have a revolution, it’s not a dinner party. Violence is inevitable,’” Jerome Cohen, a China expert at the New York University School of Law, said Wednesday on a Council on Foreign Relations conference call. “Some of them don’t believe in violence at all. Most of them, I think, would love to have a Gandhi-like orderly, peaceful protest — non-violent. That would have been more impressive had they been able to carry that out as they started to in the airport. Things, like in all protests situations, tend to get out of hand.”
Chinese authorities intensified their denunciations of the protesters after the airport clashes. Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong said the attacks on the two men were “no different from violence conducted by terrorists,” while Chinese Communist officials responsible for overseeing Hong Kong opted for a slightly milder characterization, saying the assaults were “nearly acts of terrorism.”
Wong apologized publicly “for all inconvenience caused by the peaceful demonstration at the HK International Airport” and argued that the two assaults are receiving a disproportionate amount of attention compared with the beatings inflicted on protesters over the 10 weeks of demonstrations.
“Peaceful protestor asks for democracy and free election was beaten and attacked by Pro-Beijing Gangs,” Wong tweeted, along with photos of a gruesome leg injury. “Compare to clash happened airport, this deserves more people’s attention and focus.”
