HONG KONG
China’s Hong Kong Liaison office said
on Wednesday that anti-government protesters were no different to “terrorists”,
as U.S. President Donald Trump said Chinese troops were moving to the border
with Hong Kong and urged calm.
The Beijing-based Hong Kong and Macau
Affairs office on Wednesday said extremely violent crimes must be severely
punished in accordance with the law.
The strongly worded statements by
China’s central government follows violent clashes between black clad
protesters and riot police at Hong Kong’s international airport, which saw
hundreds of flights halted for a second day.
A few dozen protesters remained at
the airport on Wednesday while workers scrubbed it clean of blood and debris.
Check-in counters reopened to queues of hundreds of weary travelers who had
waited overnight for their flights.
Ten weeks of increasingly violent
clashes between police and pro-democracy protesters, angered by a perceived
erosion of freedoms, have plunged the Asian financial hub into its worst crisis
since it reverted from British to Chinese rule in 1997.
China’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs
Office said it strongly condemned the “near terrorism criminal actions” in Hong
Kong including what it called a violent attack on a mainland Chinese journalist
and tourist at the airport.
Police condemned violent acts by
protesters overnight and said a large group had “harassed and assaulted a
visitor and a journalist”. Some protesters said they believed one of those men
was an undercover Chinese agent, while another was confirmed as a reporter from
China’s Global Times newspaper.
Five people were detained in the
latest disturbances, police said, bringing the number of those arrested since
the protests began in June to more than 600.
The protests began in opposition to a
now-suspended bill that would have allowed the extradition of suspects for
trial in mainland China but have swelled into wider calls for democracy.
Embattled Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam
has said the city has been pushed into a state of “panic and chaos”.
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| Pro-democracy protesters gather against the police brutality and the controversial extradition bill at Hong Kong's international airport on August 12, 2019. |
Demonstrators say they are fighting
the erosion of the “one country, two systems” arrangement that enshrined some
autonomy for Hong Kong when it returned to China in 1997.
The protests represent one of the
biggest challenges for Chinese President Xi Jinping since he came to power in
2012.
In Washington, U.S. President Donald
Trump said the Chinese government was moving troops to the border with Hong
Kong and urged calm.
China’s People’s Liberation Army
(PLA) has a garrison in Hong Kong but has remained in barracks since the
protests started in April. However, the PLA garrison has issued a video showing
“anti-riot” exercises, and its top brass have warned violence is “absolutely
impermissible”.
As Hong Kong’s political crisis
deepens, China denied a request for two U.S. Navy warships to visit Hong Kong
in the coming weeks, officials said.
Security at Hong Kong airport on
Wednesday was stricter than usual with several entrances closed.
Hong Kong’s Airport Authority said it
had obtained an interim court injunction to stop people from obstructing
operations and that protesters could only demonstrate in designated areas.
Dicky, a 35-year-old protester at the
airport for more than two days, said protesters would obey the injunction.
“We will continue to fight for what
we deserve otherwise all of that would have been in vain,” he said, declining
to give his full name.
Flag carrier Cathay Pacific Airways
published a half-page advertisement in the Hong Kong Economic Journal pledging
its support for the government and calling for the resumption of the rule of
law and social order.
China’s aviation regulator demanded
last week that Cathay suspend personnel who engaged in or supported protests in
Hong Kong from staffing flights into its airspace. The carrier later suspended
two pilots.
Property developers Henderson Land
Development, Cheung Kong Holdings and Sun Hung Kai Holdings also took out
newspaper advertisement in support of the government on Wednesday.
Forward Keys, a flight data company,
said the crisis had deterred people from making travel plans to the city,
citing a 4.7 percent fall in long-haul bookings to Hong Kong between June 16
and Aug. 9 compared with the same period last year.
Statements of apology from protesters
were displayed in the airport on Wednesday, promising to allow passengers to
depart, to assist medical staff to carry out their duties and not to hinder the
work of the press.
“We are not afraid of facing the
issues directly...only afraid of losing your support to the whole movement due
to our mistake, and that you give up on fighting.” - Reuters
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