Reuters
HONG KONG, OCT 18 - Hong Kong pro-democracy activists recaptured parts of a core protest zone early on Saturday, defying riot police who had tried to disperse them with pepper spray and baton charges.
About a thousand protesters, some wearing protective goggles and helmets, helped to build fresh barricades from wooden fencing and other materials in the gritty, densely populated Mong Kok district. Some chanted "black police" after the police struck demonstrators' umbrellas with their small metal batons.
The area has become a flashpoint for ugly street brawls between students and mobs, including triads, or local gangsters, intent on breaking up the prolonged protests that pose one of the biggest political challenges for China since the crushing of pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing in 1989.
Demonstrators chanting "open the road" tried late on Friday to break through multiple police lines, using umbrellas as a shield from pepper spray at a major traffic intersection.
In the melee, police used batons and scuffled violently with activists, but were eventually forced into a partial retreat, less than 24 hours after re-opening most of the area to traffic.
"Occupy Mong Kok!" a jubilant sea of several thousand people chanted afterwards. "We want real universal suffrage!"
Twenty-six people were arrested and 15 officers were injured, the government said in a statement.
"The police have no right to throw us out," said Fish Tong, a 20-year-old student in the crowd. "We are just here to take back what is supposed to belong to us."
No comments:
Post a Comment