Protesters had been angered by
police shooting woman in the eye from close range on Sunday
By DARLIE YIU
Flights resumed Tuesday at
Hong Kong airport a day after a massive pro-democracy rally there forced the
shutdown of the busy international transport hub.
Early Tuesday, passengers with
luggage were being checked in at the departures hall and information boards
showed several flights were already boarding or about to depart.
Flights out of Hong Kong
Airport had been canceled on Monday afternoon after thousands of protesters
staged a mass sit-in, following the shooting of a young woman in the face from
close range by police the previous day.
Authorities said operations
were hit hard by the protest, which prevented passengers from checking in and
going through security checks. The suspension of flights was thought to be
unprecedented.
The airport operator issued a
statement that said: “All check-in service for departure flights has been
suspended. Other than the departure flights that have completed the check-in
process and the arrival flights that are already heading to Hong Kong, all
other flights have been canceled for the rest of [Monday].”
The decision came after
thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators flooded into
the airport holding signs reading “Hong Kong is not safe”
and “Shame on police”.
“Airport operations
at Hong Kong International Airport have been seriously
disrupted as a result of the public assembly at the airport today,”
the statement said. It warned that traffic to the airport was
“very congested” and the facility’s car parks were completely full.
“Members of the public are
advised not to come to the airport.”
‘Eye for an eye’
On Tuesday morning, only a
handful of protesters remained in the airport. But fears of a police operation
to clear the facility overnight proved unfounded, with demonstrators simply leaving
by themselves.
Many of the posters and
artwork they had hung throughout the facility during the hours-long rally had
been taken down, but graffiti – some reading “an eye for an eye” – could still
be seen in several places.
The protest was dubbed “an eye
for an eye” because the young woman, who was shot in Tsim Shui Tsui on Sunday
evening with a suspected bean-bag round, faces the prospect of losing her right
eye.
Thousands of angry citizens
wearing black started gathering at the arrival hall in Terminal 1 at the
airport from 1pm to condemn the police for excessive use of force against
protesters across the city.
Many
donned eye patches to highlight the shooting of the woman at a bus
stop on Nathan Road near Tsim Sha Tsui police station at around 7.45pm.
The sit-in by an estimated
5,000 people is the fourth protest on successive days at the airport on Lantau
Island, which is one of the world’s busiest.
More than 40 people were
injured in clashes on Sunday but the woman shot in the face sustained perhaps
the most serious injuries. Medics said she suffered severe bleeding and had to
be rushed by Fire Services paramedics to the emergency department at Queen
Elizabeth Hospital – the nearest trauma outlet in southern Kowloon.
An alleged bean-bag round was
seen stuck in the protective goggles worn by the victim, which were left behind
along with her yellow helmet.
Details of the emergency
operation the woman allegedly had to undergo were circulated widely
online. It said the woman had a ruptured globe and an inferior eyelid
laceration in the right eye, and emergency surgery was also needed to repair
her canalicular system.
Medics allegedly told Apple Daily that the injury suffered by the woman was
like trying to kill her given the severe damage inflicted on the patient.
One doctor said it was only a
matter of time that the woman would lose her vision on a permanent basis, due
to high intraocular pressure during the healing process. He said the victim
would also be disfigured as more than a quarter of her face had been fractured,
including her upper jaw and nasal bones.
A post on
LIHKG, a Reddit-like forum, by a user who claimed to be the victim’s younger
sibling, said her sister had not displayed any aggression towards the
authorities – she had only stuck her head out from billboards at the bus stop
occasionally to see what police were doing.
A man suspected to be part of
the anti-riot team or a tactical unit fired shots from eight to 10 meters away,
one of which hit her sister in the face and knocked her to the ground, causing
severe bleeding from her nose and mouth.
Protest at hospital
Separately, a group of 200
nurses and medical practitioners from Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital,
a major acute hospital serving the east of Hong Kong Island, made a public
appeal with their right eye covered by sterile gauze. They condemned the police
for “attempting to murder” Hong Kong citizens, saying their “excessive use of
force” was likely to blind a female protester in one eye, broadcaster
RTHK reported.
An unnamed nurse said law
enforcers should not abuse their power against anyone with alternative
political views.
Another said it was also
unacceptable that officers regularly intrude into nursing wards to try to
arrest people suspected of taking part in protests while they were still
receiving medical treatment.
At the time of writing,
traffic was banked up on roads leading to Tung Chung and the airport on Lantau
Island, with people marching toward the check-in counters.
China on Monday slammed
protesters in Hong Kong who had thrown petrol bombs at police officers and
linked them to “terrorism”, as Beijing ramped up its rhetoric against
pro-democracy demonstrations in the financial hub.
“Hong Kong’s radical
demonstrators have repeatedly used extremely dangerous tools to attack police
officers, which already constitutes a serious violent crime, and also shows the
first signs of terrorism emerging,” said Yang Guang, spokesman for the Hong
Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council.
“This wantonly tramples on
Hong Kong’s rule of law and social order,” he said at a press briefing in
Beijing.
Yang’s remarks came a day
after thousands of pro-democracy protesters defied warnings from authorities to
hit the streets for the 10th weekend in a row. Hong Kong police fired
volleys of tear gas Sunday at protesters after denying their requests for
permits to stage a march.
But Yang focused on the
violent behavior of a “tiny minority”, which he condemned as “a serious
challenge to Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability.”
Meanwhile, rumors circulated
online that the protest at the airport would be dispersed at
6pm. Reporters at the 4pm police media briefing asked officers if this was
true, but Senior Superintendent of the PR branch Kong Wing-cheung did not reply
directly if police would disperse protesters, RTHK reported.
He said there were over 5,000
protesters at the site and the Airport Authority had their own crowd control
tactics in place.
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