Hong Kong Police Clear Out Demonstrators from University Grounds

Nov. 20, 2019 (EIRNS)—Hong Kong Police began to clear out most of the demonstrators who were still occupying the Polytechnical University in Hong Kong. After a week of chaos, with students occupying several universities and disrupting traffic in the city, the demonstrators were finally ensconced in Polytechnical University.

A siege conducted by the police, left the majority of students, getting low on supplies, to surrender to authorities. Roughly 1,000 people were arrested or surrendered, while 300 of them under the age of 18 were released after their details were recorded. While there were still 100 or so hard-liners at the university, this phase of the upsurge seems to be reaching its conclusion. The students had even used the university facilities to manufacture weapons, using the chemicals for Molotov cocktails and training with bows and arrows. They had also brought traffic to a standstill during the turmoil. What they have next in mind is hard to determine, although many of the most radical elements may have escaped in the confusion.

Hong Kong is getting a new Commissioner of Police, Tang Ping-keung, who has expressed frustration that the situation got out of hand. He was particularly angry with the public attacks in the media against how the Hong Kong police handled the situation. “If everyone had come out earlier to condemn the violence,” he said, “society would not have turned into this state in five months.”

The U.S. House of Representatives today passed the phony Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which is both an insult to the sovereignty of China and a direct attack on President Donald Trump, who has consistently insisted that Hong Kong was a matter for the sovereign state of China. After reconciliation with the Senate bill, which has passed earlier, it must then be sent to the President to be signed, under massive pressure from the McCarthyite anti-China fanatics in the Congress and in the press.