Hong Kong protesters launch fire-dipped arrows at police in latest university clashes
Protesters in Hong Kong have added to their arsenal javelins and bows and arrows, in addition to bricks and petrol bombs as they clash with police armed with tear gas, water cannon, and live bullets, in violent standoffs now spilling into university campuses.
Some of the sharpest clashes have taken place at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where police say protesters shot arrows dipped in gasoline and lit on fire, even using electric saws to target officers.
Marine police used a boat Wednesday to evacuate dozens of mainland Chinese students at their request from the CUHK campus, which remains barricaded by protesters preparing for more skirmishes.
Protests – now in their sixth month – have plunged Hong Kong into its worst political crisis ever, in a direct challenge to the authority of Xi Jinping, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party.
What started as opposition against an extradition proposal, which many worried would expose suspects to unfair trial in mainland China, has since morphed into a broader anti-China movement.
A radical faction of protesters have begun harassing people and vandalising businesses perceived as pro-Beijing and thus against the overall political movement. A man who argued with protesters on Monday was set on fire by a masked man, suffering burns to 40 per cent of his body; he remains in critical condition.
Mainland students have posted online about being targeted by protesters breaking into their dormitories and spray-painting expletives, Chinese media reported. Some organisations in neighbouring city Shenzhen are now offering free accommodation for students who want to leave Hong Kong as the protests continue.
The campus clashes this week have drawn outcry, but police have defended their actions especially at CUHK, given a “strong suspicion that the school was used as a weapon factory,” as hundreds of petrol bombs were thrown at the institution, said chief superintendent John Tse Chun-chung.
“A university is supposed to be a breeding ground for future leaders, but it became a battlefield for criminals and rioters,” said Mr Tse.
The president of CUHK’s student union, Jacky So, has applied for an interim injunction to ban police from entering the campus without a warrant, and from using crowd-control weapons on-site without school approval.
On Wednesday, protesters – many of whom are students – again built barricades on busy roads, blocked commuters and vandalised trains, causing much of the public transport system to shut down. Protesters also set fire to buses and petrol stations, police said. Riot police were deployed throughout the city to disperse demonstrators, making hundreds of arrests in recent days.
The Chinese government’s liaison office in Hong Kong has warned this week that the city is “slipping into the abyss of terrorism.”
Protests escalated after student Chow Tsz-lok, 22, died last week from injuries sustained from a fall under unclear circumstances while police were clearing protesters. Many have been outraged by the death, swearing revenge for the “blood debt.”
With chaos set to stay, the city’s education bureau ordered all schools to close Thursday, urging students not to take part in the demonstrations.
Protesters continue to call for democratic election reforms, the resignation of the city’s leader, and an independent probe into the police, thrust on the frontlines and the target of growing resentment from a deeply divided population.
What broadly underpins the movement is widespread concern that the city’s longstanding freedoms are eroding – and will eventually be snuffed out – under Communist Party rule, even though those rights are guaranteed under an agreement that kicked in when the former British colony as returned to Beijing.
