Hong Kong riot police fire teargas at protesters as unrest continues

Hong Kong riot police have fired teargas and charged towards protesters at an out-of-town district in Hong Kong as groups of pro-China supporters ripped anti-government protest messages from “Lennon Walls” across the city, raising the curtain for another weekend of unrest in the three-month political crisis.

The police-sanctioned demonstration attended by thousands in Tuen Mun on Saturday afternoon was mostly peaceful but erupted into violent conflicts between protesters and riot police officers armed with teargas, pepper spray and long shields.

Police fired teargas at protesters and dismantled makeshift barricades set up by protesters with plastic and metal roadside barriers while protesters threw petrol bombs in retaliation.

Police said in Twitter posts that “radical protesters threw petrol bombs” and possessed “offensive weapons including metal rods, slingshots and laser guns” during the confrontations.

About an hour into the protest, riot police charged towards a group of protesters and arrested a number of people. Many others got into a stand-off with police behind barricades they built earlier.

Scuffles also broke out between the police and protesters near a light rail station after some demonstrators were accused of shining laser pointers at officers. They used fire hoses to spray water while police retaliated with pepper spray and fired several rounds of sponge bullets at them. Police said in a Twitter post that the protesters damaged the station facilities with metal rods and hurled objects into the track.

Earlier, protesters near Tuen Mun town hall lowered the Chinese flag, trampled on it and set it on fire.

The Saturday protest earlier in the afternoon targeted dance performances in a local park often staged by mostly mainland Chinese women but protesters were also venting their anger over escalating police violence in recent protests and calling for broader political rights.

“Five demands, not one less!” chanted the mostly black-clad protesters, referring to their demands which include the setting up of an independent commission to investigate police brutality and universal suffrage. They also sang songs aimed at provoking the police.

Earlier this month, the Hong Kong leader, Carrie Lam, withdrew the controversial anti-extradition bill that sparked the wave of protests in June, but the move failed to calm unrest.

The protests had by then morphed into a wider and more violent anti-government movement as resentment mounted against the police and the government, which used threats and escalating force to deal with protesters. The bill, if passed, would have allowed people to be sent to mainland China for trial.

The local metro station was closed by the authorities before the event on Saturday, making it harder for protesters to reach and leave the area. The city’s transit operator, MTR Corp, has also closed the train station at Yuen Long, where a sit-in was planned earlier to commemorate an indiscriminate attack carried out by pro-China gangsters on commuters two months ago.

Earlier on Saturday, dozens of pro-China supporters tore down “Lennon Walls” of large collages of colourful anti-government protest messages in several districts.

The installations have blossomed across Hong Kong, on and under footbridges, along pedestrian walkways, at bus stops and shopping centres. A pro-Beijing city legislator, Junius Ho, who has been a vocal critic of the protests, had urged his supporters to clean up the approximately 100 Lennon Walls around the city on Saturday.

The anti-government protesters are angry about what they see as creeping interference by Beijing on Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” formula that ensures freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland, including the right of assembly and an independent judiciary.

China says it is committed to the arrangement and denies interfering. It has accused foreign governments including the US and Britain, of inciting the unrest.

The demonstrations have turned ugly and tend to peak on the weekends, often with anti-government activists, many masked and in black, throwing petrol bombs at police, trashing metro stations, blocking airport roads and lighting street fires. At times, they have been confronted by supporters of Beijing wielding sticks.