Rioters Defy Mask Ban to Protest in Hong Kong

Date: 06 October 2019 - 21:27

News ID: ۷۱۳۷۲

HONG KONG (Dispatches) -- Hong Kong police and protesters clashed on Sunday as tens of thousands marched through the central city wearing face masks in defiance of emergency powers which threaten them with a year in prison for hiding their faces.
Police fired tear gas and baton charged protesters in several locations, while some rioters threw bricks and petrol bombs at police, as night began to fall.
Authorities had braced for two major protests on Sunday, fearing a recurrence of Friday night’s violent riots which saw the Asian financial center virtually shut down the next day.
Only hours after Hong Kong’s embattled leader Carrie Lam invoked emergency powers last used more than 50 years ago, mask-wearing protesters took to the streets on Friday, setting subway stations on fire, smashing mainland China banks and clashing with police.
Police said the rallies on Hong Kong island and across the harbor in Kowloon were unlawful assemblies, which blocked major roads.
Hong Kong’s four months of protests have plunged the Chinese-ruled city into its worst political crisis in decades and pose the biggest popular challenge to Chinese President Xi Jinping since he came to power six years ago.
What started as opposition to a now-withdrawn extradition bill has swelled into riots, undermining China’s "one country, two systems” status promised when Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997.
China says foreign governments, including Britain and the United States, have fanned anti-China sentiment.
Rioters on Sunday handed out face masks to encourage people to defy the ban.
As the day wore on protesters started to target subway stations and China banks, just as they did on Friday, which forced the unprecedented closure of the city’s metro railway.
A branch of China Construction Bank (Asia) near Prince Edward station was vandalized on Sunday with "No China” sprayed on its wall. Wan Chai station, closed with a neon sign saying serious vandalism, had a protester sheet draped over it which read: "this way to HELL”.
Friday night’s "extreme violence” justified the use of emergency laws, Beijing-backed Lam said on Saturday.
The current "precarious situation”, which endangered public safety, left no timely solution but the anti-mask law, Matthew Cheung, Hong Kong’s chief secretary, wrote on his blog on Sunday. He urged people to oppose violence ahead of grassroots district council elections set for Nov. 24.
Four months of protests has pushed the Asian financial hub to the brink of its first recession in a decade.
Hong Kong may have lost as much as $4 billion in deposits to rival financial hub Singapore from June through August, Goldman Sachs estimated this week.