Sunday, August 18, 2019
Saturday, August 17, 2019
Flights resume at Hong Kong airport after shutdown
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.
The chilly Moscow summer of 2019
The past month has seen a
string of protests in the Russian capital over city council elections. The
authorities' crackdown has only consolidated the movement.
12 August 2019
Rain and protests. Protests
and rain. Since mid-July, Moscow has been flooded by rain and engulfed in
public protests, sparked by the authorities’
cynical exclusion of viable opposition candidates from the upcoming
city council election. What should have been sunny weekends and picnics in the
parks, this summer is all about work, leaking shoes, and squabbles over
child-care. My husband, who is in a similar line of work, also reports on every
major protest, and our nanny has weekends off. So, we’re at each other’s
throats as to who’ll be watching the kid, and when.
On August
3, when police arrested over 1,000 people and beat dozens in the city
center, I worked for the first two hours, observing the unsanctioned protest,
and then picked up our six-year old from my husband, next to the boulevard
ring, flanked by police snatching random protesters and bystanders from the
crowd. With “Daddy” off to do his job, my son and I walked toward the metro
holding hands. Dozens of riot police in full protective gear, armed with thick
black batons, stood next to a blue bus with covered windows parked on the
sidewalk.
Mesmerized, my son stopped. In
their oversized helmets and visors, they looked remarkably like the
space-travellers from one of his computer games. “Mommy, what are they?” –
“These are police officers,” I reluctantly replied. “They are? And what are
they doing?” – “Detaining people.” – “Bad people?” – “No, just people.” – “But
why?” Unable to come up with a child-friendly explanation, I pulled on his
hand, “Come on, let’s go home and grab some ice-cream on the way.”
A few days later, the
prosecutors petitioned a
court in Moscow to strip a young couple of their parental rights because they
took their 1-year-old baby to a protest, allegedly exposing the child to harm
and neglecting their parental duties. Police searched their
house late at night. Both parents received interrogation summonses and, as they
had no child-care arrangements lined up, they ended up bringing
the baby to the interrogation. The investigator was unfazed. Apparently,
while bringing a small child to a peaceful protest is against the child’s best
interests, being present while his parents undergo a criminal interrogation is
perfectly fine.
At the same time, the
prosecutor’s office also opened a probe into any incident involving minors in
the protests, which, under a new law,
will most likely lead to administrative charges against protest leaders and
neglect warnings against parents. Thinking back to my son lingering next to
riot police officials, I found a sitter well in advance of the protest
scheduled for Saturday, August 10.
On August 9, the country’s
chief investigative agency issued a public warning in
connection with the protest planned for the next day, reminding those intending
to participate of possible sanctions, including criminal liability. The litany
of criminal cases opened against protesters over the past few weeks is ominous.
The authorities have already
arrested 12 people in
connection with the investigation they opened into “mass
rioting,” a crime punishable by up to 15 years in jail, over the
protest of July 27 – that very peaceful protest, at which police in
Moscow had set a chilling record detaining сlose to 1400.
Law enforcement has interrogated
and searched the homes of some of the opposition candidates who
planned to run in the city council elections and their particularly active
supporters, implicating them in a criminal investigation into
alleged “meddling in . . . citizens’ election rights and the work of election
commissions.” Authorities also targeted the Anti-Corruption Fund with money
laundering accusations. The group is led by Alexei Navalny, Russia’s leading
opposition politician, and has repeatedly called on people to protest the
recent exclusion of opposition candidates.
Also on August 9, the city
administration announced a “hurricane emergency” would be in place Friday
through Saturday. Despite the forecast hurricane, which never materialized, and
the rain, which was relentless, the city organized a free barbecue
festival at Moscow’s Gorky Park for the same day as the protest, in an
apparent attempt to divert Muscovites from the protest.
They called the festival
“Meat&Beat.” Given that dozens have suffered bruises, abrasions, fractures
and head traumas at the hands of police officers at protests in recent weeks,
the peculiar name comes across as possibly snide, but definitely, intentionally
ill-suited. In another mind-boggling stroke of coincidence or absurdity, the
penitentiary department scheduled its third annual paddy
wagons race for August 10 to mark Corrections
Transportation System Day, the next day.
It rained hard all night and
on the morning of August 10. Organizers feared that the foul weather and
crackdown would mean a low turnout at Sakharov Avenue for the rally the
authorities had grudgingly sanctioned. But in defiance of hostile weather and
the even more hostile political climate, between 50,000 and
60,000 mostly young adults gathered to demand free elections and an
end to political prosecution.
Hiding my camera under a
slicker, I looked at the bright faces around me and saw no fear. When the rally
was over, the sun suddenly made a long-awaited appearance, and unsanctioned
protest “walks” through the city center commenced. Groups of young people
marched in the streets, gleefully passing hordes of riot police and Russian
Guard servicemen chanting, “We’re the power! Russia will be free.”
Two steps away from the
presidential administration at Kitai Gorod, police detained dozens of
protesters, but more groups of young people stood their ground and continued
chanting, all while their mates were dragged into police vans. By nightfall,
lush grass and colorful flower beds at the Kitai Gorod Square were all but
destroyed by police boots. And 256
people had been detained, facing hefty fines and short-term arrest,
but the protest’s spirit remained unbroken.
What happens next remains to
be seen, but one thing is clear: the authorities’ strong-arm response of these
recent weeks has ended up bringing together rather than intimidating those
Russians who are fed up by exclusion and repression.
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