Hong Kong on edge as police fire tear gas at university campus

FAN Editor
Office workers run away from tear gas as they attend a flash mob anti-government protest at the financial Central district in Hong Kong
Office workers run away from tear gas as they attend a flash mob anti-government protest at the financial Central district in Hong Kong, China, November 11, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

November 12, 2019

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong riot police fired tear gas at a university campus on Tuesday, a day after a protester was shot and a man set on fire in some of worst violence to rock the Chinese-ruled city in more than five months of anti-government demonstrations.

Some railway services were suspended and roads closed across the Asian financial hub for a second day, with long traffic jams building in the morning rush hour.

Riot police were deployed at metro stations across the territory and large queues were forming at railway platforms as commuters made their way to work.

Universities and schools canceled classes, with students, teachers and parents on edge a day after police fired tear gas and students hurled petrol bombs on some campuses.

More than 260 people were arrested on Monday, police said, bringing the total number to more than 3,000 since the protests escalated in June.

The metro station at Sai Wan Ho on eastern Hong Kong island, where a 21-year-old protester was shot on Monday, was among those closed.

A water cannon truck was stationed outside government headquarters, where the city’s Executive Council was due to hold its weekly meeting.

Hong Kong’s embattled leader Carrie Lam said on Monday the violence in the former British colony has exceeded protesters’ demands for democracy and demonstrators were now the enemy of the people.

Protesters are angry about what they see as police brutality and meddling by Beijing in the freedoms guaranteed under the “one country, two systems” formula put in place when the territory returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

China denies interfering and has blamed Western countries for stirring up trouble.

(Reporting by Donny Kwok and Anne Marie Roantree; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Paul Tait)

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