Hong Kong anti-government protesters yesterday marched through several shopping malls chanting pro-democracy slogans, a day after violent clashes with police left a shroud of tear gas over a prime tourist district decorated for Christmas.
The protests, which escalated in June, have been largely peaceful for much of this month after pro-democracy candidates overwhelmingly won district council elections a month earlier.
However, Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing leaders have made no concessions to the protesters, despite acknowledging their defeat in the polls, and the rallies have turned more confrontational over the festive period.
Photo: AFP
Riot police patrolled several past protest hotspots, while tourists and shoppers, many wearing Santa hats or reindeer antlers, strolled past.
Television footage showed police pepper-spraying a man, who they then arrested, outside a shopping center in the densely populated Mong Kok District.
Hundreds of protesters, dressed in black and wearing masks, descended on shopping malls around the territory — mixing with shoppers and shouting popular slogans such as: “Liberate Hong Kong” and “Revolution of our Times” — but most shops remained open.
On Tuesday, baton-wielding police had fired tear gas at thousands of protesters who barricaded roads, spray-painted slogans on buildings, and trashed a Starbucks cafe and an HSBC branch.
A water cannon flanked by armored jeeps also roamed the streets, but was not heavily used.
Twenty-five people were injured overnight, including one man who fell from the second to first floor of a shopping mall as he tried to escape police, and another who fell from the rooftop of a restaurant, the Hong Kong Hospital Authority said, although it was unclear if the latter was related to the protests.
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