Hong Kong Officials Urge Calm While Warning of ‘Signs of Terror’

(Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong authorities appealed for calm in the Asian financial center while warning that radical protesters showed “signs of terror” over the weekend in some of the most violent confrontations since unrest broke out three months ago.

Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung, the city’s No. 2 official, said that police would arrest those who engaged in illegal activities after protesters disrupted traffic to the airport, hurled petrol bombs at cops and set fire to a massive roadblock in the city center. Demonstrators, by contrast, accused the police of indiscriminately beating civilians in a subway station on Saturday night.

“Stopping the violence is the top priority,” Cheung told reporters on Monday alongside other top officials from Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s administration. “Law and order must be restored ASAP, without further ado. No nonsense.”

His colleague, Security Secretary John Lee, said the level of violence was getting worse: “Radical protesters disregarded the law, and their illegal behavior and violence continued to spread and escalate, showing signs of terror.” So far, city authorities have resisted describing the protests using the word “terror,” a term invoked by mainland officials.

The city’s 13th straight weekend of unrest since early June showed no end in sight to the most serious challenge to Beijing’s control over the former colony since its return to Chinese rule in 1997. The demonstrations, which again disrupted the city’s busy international airport, spilled into Monday with students boycotting classes and calling for a general strike on the first day back to school.

The briefing on Monday showed that authorities were still considering a colonial-era emergency law that would grant the government sweeping powers to arrest, search properties, censor publications and shut down the Internet. Cheung declined to rule out using the so-called Emergency Regulations Ordinance, enacted by the British in 1922 and last used to quell violent riots in 1967, saying only that such powers would need to be “reasonable.”

As the work week began, riot cops were dispatched into the city’s subway stations to keep order amid plans to disrupt the morning commute, even though it ended up relatively smooth.

Tensions were still high as students gathered downtown and at a major university despite at-times heavy rain. Many local universities and teachers planned to make allowances for people who skip class to attend protests.

Police said in a briefing that they arrested 159 people over the weekend, bringing the total number of protesters arrested since June 9 to 1,117. Radical behavior among protesters was now “spreading like a plague,” Mak Chin-ho, assistant commissioner of police for operations, told reporters.

Participants in a rally outside the city’s government headquarters Monday said they understood the radical demonstrators, even if they didn’t plan to participate in such actions themselves, because the government had largely ignored peaceful marches that drew as many as two million protesters. “Why are the protesters more aggressive? It’s because the government is still not answering our questions and also the attitude of the police,” said a 35-year-old music teacher, who gave only her surname, Wong.

Tear Gas

The weekend of unrest followed the police banning of a mass march on Saturday and a series of arrests targeting prominent pro-democracy figures -- including former student leader Joshua Wong -- on Friday. Police had warned protesters not to attend the unauthorized rally.

Yet on Saturday, tens of thousands of people crowded into city streets for a largely peaceful protest march, before the situation deteriorated later in the afternoon. Police ramped up their response as demonstrations got more intense near government buildings in the city’s Admiralty district.

Riot cops responded to petrol bombs and other projectiles with scores of volleys of tear gas and powerful sprays of blue-dyed water. Officers also pursued protesters into subway stations, trains and airport bathrooms.

Television footage showed them swinging batons in a train car on the city’s MTR rail network as protesters clutched each other on the ground and tried to huddle behind a wall of unfurled umbrellas. On Monday, staff at the Queen Mary Hospital on the western side of Hong Kong Island held a protest event inside the facility, holding up signs condemning alleged police brutality and saying they would help patients, regardless of their political views.

Authorities said the disruption at the airport led to 25 canceled flights and 200 delays. The city’s security chief praised his officers.

“I’m proud of Hong Kong police force -- they remain Asia’s finest,” said Lee, the security chief. “They are exercising strong restraint.”

--With assistance from Nicole Sy, Fion Li, Stephen Tan and Justin Chin.

To contact the reporters on this story: Iain Marlow in Hong Kong at imarlow1@bloomberg.net;Aaron Mc Nicholas in Hong Kong at amcnicholas2@bloomberg.net;Natalie Lung in Hong Kong at flung6@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.