General strike, boycott loom in HK
Credit to Author: ASSOCIATED PRESS| Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2019 16:18:09 +0000
HONG Kong: Pupils in this territory made human chains at schools early Monday and protesters disrupted rush-hour trains and hospitals as the city’s pro-democracy protesters urged operators, doctors and nurses to join and stop performing their duties.
The global financial hub is in the grip of an unprecedented crisis as a largely leaderless movement has drawn millions on to the streets to protest against what they see as an erosion of freedoms and increasing interference in their affairs by Beijing.
China, which stands behind Hong Kong’s government, has reacted with intimidatory tactics, including pressure on the city’s businesses and well-publicized troop movements and exercises near the border.
An editorial late Sunday on Xinhua, the state news agency, warned “the end is coming” for the protest movement, without giving further details.
Early Monday protesters dressed in their signature black stood at doorways of trains, stopping them from closing, at a series of stations on the underground system, briefly disrupting an arterial network that has become a target of their activities.
Shortly afterwards, secondary school pupils formed human chains outside a number of government schools before classes began. Some wore gas masks, helmets and goggles — the now essential kit carried by protesters during months of tear gas-enveloped rallies and clashes with police.
At one school, the bronze statue of Sun Yat-sen, the Hong Kong-educated powerhouse of Chinese political thought, was also fitted with a gas mask and goggles. A few dozen pupils risked disciplinary action at school to attend a rally in the city center.
“Hong Kong is our home… we are the future of the city and have to take up responsibility to save it,” said a 17-year-old secondary school student, who gave her surname as Wong.
The semiautonomous Chinese territory has been rocked by nearly three months of pro-democracy protests calling for electoral reforms and an independent inquiry into police conduct.
The youth-dominated demonstrations will be tested as classes resume and many protesters are expected to go back to school following the summer break. A strike was scheduled for Monday afternoon for student protesters to skip classes and congregate at a public square in central Hong Kong.
At St. Francis’ Canossian College, a girls’ school, uniformed students kneeled in a line and held up hand-painted signs that read: “The five major demands: Not one is dispensable.”
The protesters’ demands include dropping charges against demonstrators who have been arrested and formally withdrawing an extradition bill that would allow Hong Kong residents to be sent to mainland China to stand trial.
Some demonstrators disrupted the morning commute by blocking train doors, attempting to evade riot police who were hot on their heels by moving quickly between multiple public transit stations.
Officers at Lok Fu station hit protesters with batons and arrested one. Another three were arrested at Lai King station.
On Sunday, the MTR Corp. suspended train service to the airport after several hundred protesters gathered there following calls online to disrupt transportation. They blocked buses arriving at the airport, but police in riot helmets kept them out of the terminal.
The protesters accuse Beijing and the government of Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam of eroding the autonomy and civil liberties promised when the former British colony was returned to China in 1997.
AP