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movement’s demands.
The protests began in
June with calls to drop a
now-suspended extradition
bill that would have allowed
Hong Kong residents to be
sent to China to stand trial,
then widened to include free
elections for the city’s top
leader and an independent
inquiry into alleged police
brutality.
“Hong Kong people’s pri-
vate information is already
being extradited to China.
We have to be very con-
cerned,” organizer Ventus
Lau said ahead of the pro-
cession.
The semiautonomous
Chinese territory has said it
plans to install about 400 ofHONG KONG — Hong
Kong protesters threw
bricks and gasoline bombs
at police, who responded
with tear gas, as chaotic
scenes returned to the sum-
mer-long anti-government
protests on Saturday for the
first time in nearly two
weeks.
Hundreds of black-clad
protesters armed with bam-
boo poles and baseball bats
fought with police officers
wielding batons on a main
road following a march
against “smart lampposts”
that was sparked by fears
of surveillance equipment
mounted in lampposts here.
The chaotic scenes un-
folded outside a police sta-
tion and a nearby shopping
mall as officers in riot gear
faced off with protesters who
set up makeshift street bar-
ricades.
The violence interrupted
nearly two weeks of calm in
Hong Kong, which has been
gripped by a turbulent pro-
democracy movement since
June.
Police fired tear gas to
disperse the crowd after re-
peated warnings “went fu-
tile,” the government said in
a statement. By early eve-
ning, most of the protesters
had dispersed.
Earlier in the day, some
protesters used an electric
saw and ropes to pull down a
lamppost and cheered as it
crashed to the ground.
The protest march
started peacefully as sup-
porters took to the streets to
demand the removal of the
lampposts over worries that
they could contain high-tech
cameras and facial recogni-
tion software used for sur-
veillance by Chinese author-
ities.
The government in Hong
Kong said smart lampposts
collect only data on traffic,
weather and air quality.
The protesters chanted
slogans calling for the gov-
ernment to answer the
the smart lampposts in four
urban districts, starting
with 50 this summer in the
Kwun Tong and Kowloon
Bay districts that were the
scene of Saturday’s protest
march.
Hong Kong’s govern-
ment-owned subway system
operator, MTR Corp., shut
down stations and sus-
pended train service near
the protest route after Chi-
nese state media accused it
of helping protesters escape
in previous demonstrations.
MTR said Friday that it
may close stations near pro-
tests under high risk or in
emergency situations. The
company has until now kept
stations open and trains
running even when there
have been chaotic skir-
mishes between protesters
and police.
Lau said MTR was work-
ing with the government to
“suppress freedom of ex-
pression.”
Also Saturday, Chinese
police said they had released
an employee at the British
Consulate in Hong Kong as
scheduled after 15 days of
administrative detention.
Simon Cheng Man-kit
was detained for violating
mainland Chinese law and
“confessed to his illegal
acts,” the public security bu-reau in Luohu, Shenzhen,
said on its Weibo microblog
account, without providing
further details.
The Chinese government
has said that Cheng, who
went missing after traveling
by train to mainland China
for a business trip, was held
for violating public order
regulations in Shenzhen.
His case further stoked ten-
sions in Hong Kong, a former
British colony.
The British government
confirmed his release.
“We welcome the release
of Simon Cheng and are de-
lighted that he can be reunit-
ed with his family,” the For-
eign and Commonwealth
Office said in a statement,
adding that Cheng and his
family had requested pri-
vacy.
Cheng, a Scottish govern-
ment trade and investment
officer, was a local employee
without a diplomatic pass-
port.
The Global Times, a
Communist Party-owned
nationalistic tabloid, said
Thursday that he was de-
tained for “soliciting prosti-
tutes.”
China often uses public
order charges against politi-
cal targets and has some-
times used the accusation of
soliciting prostitution.Violence returns to Hong Kong
PROTESTERS use wooden bats and bamboo poles in their clashes with police,
who respond with tear gas in the streets of Hong Kong as journalists keep tabs.Vincent YuAssociated PressClashes follow protest
march against ‘smart
lampposts’ sparked by
surveillance fears.
associated press
‘Hong Kong
people’s private
information is
already being
extradited to
China. We have
to be very
concerned.’
— Ventus Lau,
protest organizerJERUSALEM — The Is-
raeli military attacked tar-
gets near Damascus late
Saturday in what it said was
a successful effort to thwart
an imminent Iranian drone
strike on Israel, stepping up
an already heightened cam-
paign against Iranian mili-
tary activity in the region.
The late-night airstrike,
which triggered Syrian anti-
aircraft fire, appeared to be
one of the most intense at-
tacks by Israeli forces in sev-
eral years of hits on Iranian
targets in Syria.
Lt. Col. Jonathan
Conricus, a military spokes-
man, said Iran’s Revolution-
ary Guard’s Quds Force,
working with allied Shiite
militias, had been planning
to send a number of explo-
sives-laden attack drones
into Israel.
Conricus said Israel had
monitored the plot for sev-
eral months and on Thurs-
day prevented Iran from
making an “advanced at-
tempt” to execute the same
plan.
Then, Iran tried again
late Saturday to carry out
the same attack, he said.
“We were able to thwart
this attack with fighter jets,”
he said, saying the Iranian
attack was believed to be
“very imminent.”
He said Israel’s chief of
staff was meeting with sen-
ior officers and forces wereon high alert near the Syrian
frontier.
Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu went
on Twitter and called the at-
tack by Israeli warplanes a
“major operational effort.”
“Iran has no immunity
anywhere,” he said in his
tweet. “If someone rises up
to kill you, kill him first.”
Israel has acknowledged
carrying out hundreds of
airstrikes in Syria in recent
years.
Most of them have been
aimed at arms shipments
believed to be headed from
Iran to its Shiite proxy
Hezbollah. Direct clashes
between Israel and Iranian
forces have been rare.
“This was a significant
plan with significant capa-
bilities that had been
planned for a few months,”
Conricus said. “It was not
something done on a low lev-
el, but rather top down from
the Quds Force.”
Syrian state TV an-
nounced late Saturday that
the country’s air defenses
had responded to “hostile”
targets over Damascus and
shot down incoming mis-
siles before they reached
their targets.
State TV did not give fur-
ther details about the Israeli
attack.
Israel considers Iran to
be its greatest enemy and
has repeatedly vowed that it
will not allow Iran to estab-
lish a permanent military
presence in Syria, where Ira-
nian troops have been fight-
ing in support of President
Bashar Assad during the
country’s eight-year civil
war.
In recent days, U.S. offi-
cials have said that Israeli
strikes have also hit Iranian
targets in Iraq.Israel strikes
Syria targets
to prevent
Iran attack
Tehran and militias
plotted for months to
send bomb-laden
drones into Israel, a
military official says.
associated press