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HONG KONG Chief Executive Carrie Lam vowed yesterday to “spare no effort” in bringing an end to violence that has rocked the Chinese city for months.
“If there is still any wishful thinking that by escalating violence the Hong Kong special administrative regional government will yield to pressure to satisfy so-called political demands — that will not happen,” she declared.
She spoke out after a day in which rioters set fire to a man trying to remonstrate with them in the Ma On Shan district. Footage shows that when the man exclaimed: “We are all Chinese,” he was doused in a flammable liquid and set alight. He fled the scene on fire and his condition remains unknown.
A protester shot in the stomach while rushing a police officer was taken to hospital and remained in “critical” condition, authorities said following another weekend of torched Metro stations and smashed shopfronts as demonstrators reacted angrily to the death of 22-year-old student Chow Tsz-lok on Friday. Mr Chow died in a fall from a multistorey car park. Protesters say he was fleeing from police tear gas.
Rioters stormed through shopping arcades, smashing shops owned by mainland Chinese companies. The Sha Tin railway station was damaged and train services were partly suspended as obstacles were strewn on tracks and parts of the network were set on fire. Windows of the state-owned Bank of China were broken.
Last week, a pro-Beijing member of the Legislative Council, Junius Ho, who is the elected representative of the New Territories West constituency, was stabbed by a protester who had stopped him pretending to want a selfie.
The city has already withdrawn the controversial extradition Bill that kicked off the protests. The legislation would have allowed Hong Kong to extradite criminal suspects to mainland China, Taiwan and some other jurisdictions under certain circumstances.
The man whose case prompted it — Chan Tong-kai, who murdered his girlfriend Poon Hiu-wing in Taiwan before fleeing home to Hong Kong, from which he could not be extradited due to the lack of a treaty — was quietly released in October. He says he is prepared to go to Taiwan to face trial for the murder, which he admits, but the territories cannot agree on a mechanism to permit that.
