Foreign Affairs

Hong Kong Protests: ‘Police Officer Had His Baton Taken From Him And Was Attacked With It’

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A demonstrator at the Hong Kong International Airport took a police officer’s baton and hit him with it after the officer appeared to push a woman, video footage from a Tuesday protest shows.

A police officer can be seen forcing a woman to the ground before protesters surround and attack him in a video Hong Kong-based Wall Street Journal reporter Mike Bird posted to Twitter. One protester took the officer’s baton and hit him with it.

“Police officer had his baton taken from him and was attacked with it. Drew his pistol and aimed at protesters,” Bird wrote. “Astonished nobody killed here tonight.”

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Thousands of Hong Kong residents flocked to the airport Monday and Tuesday, causing the cancellation of hundreds of flights, in protest of police brutality that was reported during Sunday’s protests against the government’s extradition bill.

Police who were present during Hong Kong’s Sunday protests against the extradition bill were accused of and filmed using excessive force and teargas in an enclosed subway station in Kwai Fong and in the shopping district of Tsim Sha Tsui.

Witnesses at Sunday’s protests also reported police using protester disguises to bombard demonstrators with hidden batons and guns loaded with rubber bullets.

Another violent video appears to show police pushing a protester into a pool of blood while he yells, “I’ve already been arrested. Don’t do this. I’m begging you.”

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#HongKong police made mass arrests in Causeway Bay on Sunday eve – aided by men who appeared to be undercover officers dressed as protesters. HKFP footage showed one of the men assisting in an arrest of a bloodied activist. Full story: https://t.co/2ZQIrsUKnI pic.twitter.com/wrY2xSaI2I

— Hong Kong Free Press (@HongKongFP) August 11, 2019

Airport protesters Monday and Tuesday used the phrase “an eye for an eye” in response to reports of a woman who police allegedly shot in the eye, the South China Morning Post reported.

China sent military forces toward the Hong Kong-Shenzhen border as a threat if protests escalate further.

“Beijing realized at some point that this was not just opposition to one bill or one policy but that it ran much deeper, and it had a long-term challenge on its hands,” Adam Ni, China specialist at Australia’s Macquarie University, told NPR. “Beijing [now] sees the unfolding crisis as something that is really destabilizing and challenges its rule, its control.”