HONG KONG: Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to Hong Kong streets on Sunday and marched to the US Consulate, urging American lawmakers to pass legislation in support of the territory's democratic aspirations.
The police-sanctioned rally and march through the city center had some of the trappings of a 4th of July parade, as protesters waved American flags and played the Star Spangled Banner. Demonstrators carried red, white and blue signs calling for President Donald Trump to "Liberate Hong Kong" and chanted: "Free Hong Kong, pass the act!"
As has happened in the past with the generally peaceful demonstrations, violence broke out at the end of the day. By early evening, groups of protesters had vandalized a main subway station in central Hong Kong that was closed by police earlier in the day and set a fire around one of its entrances. Demonstrators wearing face masks and helmets smashed station windows leaving glass piled on the sidewalk. They tossed street signs and emptied trash cans down the subway stairwells and began building barricades in the streets.
Later in the night, police fired repeatedly tear gas to disperse protesters in the popular shopping district of Causeway Bay.
The pockets of violence continued two consecutive nights of clashes, despite Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam's decision to withdraw the widely unpopular extradition bill that had originally sparked the months-long political crisis - a clear sign that her concession has been roundly rejected by the majority of pro-democracy protesters.
As dissent in Hong Kong - and the accompanying police crackdown - continues, Lam and her government will have to face the possibility of growing international criticism, particularly from the United States, where lawmakers have now returned from their summer recess.
Authorities have even targeted prominent activists who have not been at the forefront of the recent protests. Former student leader Joshua Wong, who is due to visit the United States soon to testify at a congressional hearing in support of the Hong Kong bill, was arrested at the city's airport while returning from a trip in Taiwan, he said through a legal representative on Sunday evening.
Wong was detained for "breaching bail conditions" following his arrest last month, but said this was because of mistakes on his bail certificate. He said he expected to be released Monday but called his overnight detention "utterly unreasonable."
Organizers handed a petition to a consulate official calling for the swift passage in Congress of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, a bill that has bipartisan backing. This latest protest will likely draw the ire of Beijing, which has already accused the United States of meddling in the months-long political crisis and warned that Hong Kong is an internal Chinese matter.
Members of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China reintroduced the bill in June, days after a million people marched calling for the extradition legislation to be scrapped.
The bill would require an annual review of the special treatment afforded by Washington to Hong Kong under the US Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992. This would include the trade and business privileges Hong Kong enjoys, separate from China. The legislation also calls for asset freezes and denial of entry into the United States for people found to be "suppressing basic freedoms" in Hong Kong.
"The Chinese government is breaking their promises to give freedom and human rights to Hong Kong. We want to use the US to push China to do what they promised over 20 years ago," said a 24-year-old protester who declined to be named. He wore a red "Make America Great Again" hat. "The US government can make China think: Do they really want to lose Hong Kong?"
Lam, Hong Kong's chief executive, suspended the extradition bill in mid-June, but did not fully withdraw it until Wednesday. In the weeks between those actions, the protests expanded in intensity and scope to more broadly focus on Beijing's erosion of the "one country, two systems," framework under which Hong Kong has existed since it was handed back to China in 1997.
In an indication of the growing anti-China flavor of protests, demonstrators on Sunday carried posters and stickers depicting the Chinese flag with its yellow stars rearranged into a swastika.