Chinese state-run media yesterday called for a “tougher line” on democracy protesters in Hong Kong as it denounced a “terroristic” attack on Xinhua news agency’s office in the territory on Saturday.
“Vandalizing a news agency is as terroristic as challenging the bottom line of civilization,” Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily said in a Facebook post.
The post was accompanied by a video of a man being beaten and stripped of his clothing by people the publication called “rioters” in the Mong Kok area of Kowloon.
Photo: AFP
“Intensifying violence in Hong Kong calls for tougher line to restore order,” the English-language China Daily said in the headline of an editorial.
The protesters “court the indulgence extended to them by friendly local and Western media outlets, while seeking to silence those trying to put the protests in the spotlight of truth,” the article said. “They are doomed to fail simply because their violence will encounter the full weight of the law.”
Neither the editorials nor the People’s Daily’s Facebook post mentioned a knife attack on Sunday night in Tai Koo Shing, a middle-class neighborhood on Hong Kong Island that left at least five people wounded, two critically.
Hong Kong police yesterday said that a 48-year-old man suspected of slashing two people and biting off part of the ear of pro-democracy lawmaker Andrew Chiu (趙家賢) had been arrested, along with two men who attacked him in return.
Senior police official John Tse said the man struck a couple with a knife outside a mall after an argument, before turning his teeth on Chiu’s ear.
Tse said the assailant, whose name was not given, was then attacked by an angry crowd, including two men aged 23 and 29. All three were arrested.
“We do not tolerate any form of violence regardless of one’s motive and political stance. We will certainly investigate fully and bring offenders to justice,” Tse said.
Local media cited witnesses as saying that before going on a rampage, the man told his victims that Hong Kong belongs to China.
Tse said that there were several other bloody incidents over the weekend in which rioters attacked those with dissenting views.
“Such public shaming and bloody violence are totally against humanity,” Tse said.
He said police arrested 325 people over the weekend as operations were beefed up to stymie illegal rallies and pursue radical protesters who had vandalized shops, subway stations and committed arson in a repeat of weekly violence.
“Rioters’ destructive acts serve no other purpose than to vent their anger and grievances, real and imagined. Continuing this rampage is a lose-lose situation for Hong Kong,” Tse added.
His comments were made through a Facebook Live broadcast after police called off their news conference when six journalists staged a protest and refused to leave.
Wearing helmets with characters that read “Investigate police violence, stop police lies,” they were protesting against what they said was rising police violence against journalists covering the protests.
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