(Bloomberg) — Hong Kong cleaned up from another weekend of violent protests ahead of Tuesday’s holiday marking the 70th anniversary of Communist rule in China, as President Xi Jinping paid homage to the remains of Mao Zedong in Beijing.
Demonstrators set a subway station entrance ablaze and threw petrol bombs at police on Sunday as tens of thousands tried to march on Hong Kong’s central government offices. They were met by officers who deployed rounds of tear gas and a water cannon to disperse them for a second straight day.
The unrest disrupted some services in Hong Kong’s city center, with rail operator MTR Corp. temporarily closing downtown Wan Chai, Admiralty, Causeway Bay and Tin Hau stations. Emergency workers treated injured people in the streets. Forty-eight people were sent to the hospital Sunday, the city’s Hospital Authority said, with at least one woman still in critical condition.
“Some police officers were surrounded and attacked by a large group of violent protesters,” the Hong Kong police said in a statement about a clash outside a subway station in the Wan Chai area Sunday. “With their lives under serious threat, an officer fired one warning shot into the sky to protect their own safety.”
The violence comes as Beijing prepares for the Oct. 1 anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, which will be marked on the mainland by “mass pageantry” in which at least 100,000 people will take part. The festivities include a military parade and an evening gala in Tiananmen Square.
Xi and other party leaders visited the remains of former leader Mao and attended a ceremony to pay tribute to deceased national heroes in the square on Monday morning, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Hong Kong’s ‘Frontliners’ Say They’re Ready to Die for Movement
Hong Kong is bracing for large-scale protests on Tuesday. The government canceled the city’s annual National Day fireworks on the waterfront, citing safety concerns, and banned a planned rally by major pro-democracy organizer, the Civil Human Rights Front. The group has appealed the ban, with a decision expected by authorities on Monday.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam will lead a delegation to Beijing Tuesday to participate in celebrations, her office said. She will return to Hong Kong in the evening via the border city of Shenzhen, and the city’s No. 2 official, Matthew Cheung, will be its acting leader in her absence.
Rallies have also been planned in six districts that have seen some of the most violent protests of recent months: Wan Chai, Wong Tai Sin, Sham Shui Po, Tsuen Wan, Tuen Mun and Sha Tin. Most of the demonstrations are set to start in the afternoon.
Protests have rocked the Asian financial hub since early June, triggered by proposed legislation allowing extraditions to China and since morphing into a broader push back against Beijing’s grip.
China Screens Patriotic Movies to Whip Up Nationalistic Fervor
Activist and protest organizer Ventus Lau was arrested Monday morning for alleged offenses including criminal damage and trespassing in the the city’s Legislative Council chamber — which was broken into by protesters on July 1 — a friend told Lau’s media WhatsApp group. Local actor Gregory Wong was also arrested on similar charges, activist Nathan Law wrote on his Facebook page.
Lam, who had tried to push the bill through before protests erupted, assumed responsibility for the “entire unrest” as she held her first community dialogue event last week — a bid to assuage demonstrators ahead of Oct. 1.
(Updates with Xi visiting Tiananmen Square from headline and first paragraph)
To contact the reporters on this story: Natalie Lung in Hong Kong at [email protected];Li Liu in Beijing at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at [email protected], Karen Leigh
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