A10 EZ RE K THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, AUGUST 19 , 2019
BY SHIBANI MAHTANI
AND GERRY SHIHhong kong — Hundreds of
thousands of protesters, facing
an intensifying police crackdown
and threats of military force from
Beijing, responded Sunday with a
huge and peaceful march, under-
scoring continued mass support
for the pro-autonomy movement
here.
Although authorities did not
grant permission for a march and
a torrential downpour soaked
demonstrators, the spontaneous
procession made its way haphaz-
ardly across the city, participants
defiantly chanting calls for free-
dom and repudiating alleged po-
lice brutality.
Organizers estimated the turn-
out at more than 1.7 million —
among the largest demonstra-
tions seen here in weeks. It was
marked by restraint from pro-
testers, who urged one another to
avoid confrontations with police.
Police said 128,000 filled Vic-
toria Park at its busiest point but
did not release estimates of the
number who marched or demon-
strators in the surrounding areas.
After two months of sustained
dissent, the movement is enter-
ing a pivotal moment: Hong
Kong police have deployed un-
precedented force, including in
residential neighborhoods, and
made more than 700 arrests to
discourage further unrest. Pro-
testers and pro-establishment
groups have clashed violently.
And Beijing has ramped up pres-
sure to bring international corpo-
rations to heel.
But as the stakes rise sharply,
activists exhorted Hong Kongers
on Sunday to “no longer stay
silent.”
“Over the last two months in
Hong Kong, we’ve shed blood,
sweat, and tears,” the Civil Hu-
man Rights Front, the organizer
of the rally, said in an open letter.
“Hong Kongers have endured
enough humiliation by the Hong
Kong Government and the Hong
Kong Police.”
Civil Human Rights Front
leaders, who organized marches
in June that drew millions, feared
that attendance this time would
be affected by bad weather and
an airport fracas last week that
marred the movement’s image.
Police rejected their demands for
a march from Victoria Park to
central Hong Kong and urged the
rally to stay put inside the park.
But the organizers’ concerns
about turnout appeared to be
unfounded, as Victoria Park
quickly overflowed with people
despite pouring rain and gusting
winds. So many emerged for the
rally that major thoroughfares
near Victoria Park were jammed.
The large turnout, which
forced the closure of roads and
diverted traffic, was the latest
indicator of the pro-autonomy
movement’s unflagging momen-
tum, even after the ugly scenes
Tuesday at Hong Kong’s airport,
where frenzied mobs blocked
passengers from boarding planes
and effectively took two Chinese
men hostage for a short time. The
attendance also underscored
protester resilience in the face of
the escalating crackdown by au-
thorities and rhetoric from Bei-
jing, which has sought to brandthem as terrorists.
China’s People’s Armed Police,
a paramilitary force, practiced
crowd control tactics in Shen-
zhen, the Chinese city connected
to Hong Kong, over the past
week.
“They are doing it to scare us,”
said Jeff, a 36-year-old manager
at a logistics firm who took a
break from the rain-soaked
march. He pushed back against
China’s depiction of the protest-
ers as radicals.
“Hong Kong is part of China,
but Hong Kong people deserve to
have our rights and our benefits,”
said Jeff, who gave only his first
name for fear of reprisal from
authorities.
“We want to fight for freedom,
fight about the extradition, fight
about police, about housing,
about our rights.”
Previous rallies have been tar-
nished by violence, and the pros-
pect loomed over the event on
Sunday. Opposition figures
hoped the rally would help re-
store the movement’s interna-tional image after protesters at
the airport were branded as ex-
tremists earlier in the week.
When protesters used laser
pointers to provoke police guard-
ing government buildings, others
scolded them and called for re-
straint. Wong Yik-Mo, one of the
leaders of the Civil Human
Rights Front, said he believed
most protesters wanted a peace-
ful demonstration.
“There’s a consensus everyone
will be restrained,” he said. “It’ll
be in the police’s hands whether
to provoke us, whether to fire
tear gas.”
The police presence remained
light through the afternoon, and
there was no attempt to block the
route of the march. But a front-
line police officer, who spoke on
the condition of anonymity be-
cause he was not authorized to
speak to reporters, said water
cannons — a new crowd-disper-
sal tool police have in their ar-
senal — were on standby.
Protesters are, above all, de-
manding an independent investi-gation into the police and their
use of force to quell the demon-
strations, including mass arrests,
tear gas fired in almost all of
Hong Kong’s districts and the use
of projectiles including bean bag
rounds.
Some carried signs showing a
one-eyed young woman, a refer-
ence to a medical worker who
was hit in the eye by a projectile
last week during clashes between
police and protesters. Police say
they cannot confirm how the
woman was injured.
A spokesman for the Hong
Kong government “expressed re-
gret” at the protest’s focus on the
police.
“Many police stations were at-
tacked or besieged for over 75
times [during the protests]. The
Police have been handling these
illegal acts with tolerance,” the
spokesman said in a statement.
“Only when they were violent-
ly attacked and left with no
choice did the Police use mini-
mum force to disperse protesters
in order to restore social order.”The government “appealed to
those participating in public
meetings and processions to ex-
press their views in a peaceful
and rational manner and say ‘no’
to violence so that Hong Kong
can resume order as soon as
possible, return to rationality
and regain momentum.”
Helen Ho, a housewife from
the outlying Sha Tin neighbor-
hood, prepared to enter Victoria
Park on Sunday with her 2-year-
old son strapped to her chest. Her
husband, Samuel, a teacher, cra-
dled their 1-year-old daughter.
Ho said she was tired of watch-
ing police officials hold daily
news conferences saying they use
limited force even as they launch
tear gas and fire projectiles into
crowds of civilians.
“At this point, it is very clear
they can do anything they want
then say anything. It doesn’t
make sense,” Ho said as she put a
pacifier in her son’s mouth.
She worried that violence
would erupt again. She would
take her children home soon.
“We need to show our voice
about police brutality and fight
for their future,” Ho said. Chants
of “Fight for freedom! Stand with
Hong Kong!” rang through the
park.
Even as night fell, masked
protesters who usually arm
themselves with bricks, shields
and other makeshift weapons to
square off with police remained
restrained, urged by others near-
by not to fall into “police traps.”
Protesters encouraged one an-
other not to gather around Bei-
jing’s liaison office in the city, a
target of earlier demonstrations
that was heavily guarded Sunday
by riot police, to keep the evening
peaceful.
Paranoia has been high in the
movement after undercover po-
lice dressed as protesters in
masks and black outfits made
arrests last weekend.
Demonstrations were also
held on Saturday, one of them
organized by teachers who said
they feared for their young stu-
dents who have been at the fore-
front of the protests.
Marches were held in cities
around the world, including New
York, Boston, London, Toronto,
Sydney and Melbourne, to ex-
press solidarity for the Hong
Kong movement.
[email protected]
[email protected]Tiffany Liang contributed to this
report.Hong Kong’s biggest march in weeks remains peaceful
BY PAMELA CONSTABLE
AND SHARIF HASSANkabul — At least 63 people were
killed when a suicide bomber
linked to the Islamic State blew
himself up in a crowded wedding
hall in the Afghan capital late Sat-
urday, one of the most devastating
attacks on civilians in years of
conflict and terror.
The local affiliate of the Islamic
State claimed responsibility in a
statement online with an image of
a young man with an assault rifle.
The extremist Sunni militia de-
scribed the man as a Pakistani
named Abu Asim who had at-
tacked a gathering of “rejecter
polytheists,” as the group de-
scribes followers of Shiite Islam.
Officials initially said 38 people
had died, but the scale of the at-
tack became apparent Sunday
morning, when the Interior Minis-
try said at least 63 had been killed
and more than 180 wounded. City
hospitals were overwhelmed, and
relatives waited hours outside for
news of their loved ones.
The unprecedented targeting of
a wedding party, attended by
women and children, struck at the
heart of Kabul’s lively, family-
oriented social scene. Brightly lit,
multistory wedding halls here of-
ten hold several such celebrations
on a single weekend night.
A spokesman for the Taliban
insurgents, Sohail Shaheen, de-
nied any connection to the bomb-
ing in a tweet Sunday. He called it
a “brutal act” and said the group
“condemns it in the strongestterms.”
The Taliban is in peace negotia-
tions with U.S. officials, who have
said they expect to reach a deal
soon that would lead to most U.S.
troops leaving the country.
Speaking to reporters Sunday
about drawing down U.S. forces in
Afghanistan, President Trump
said: “We’re talking to Afghani-
stan. Both the government and
we’re also talking to the Taliban,
having very good discussions.
We’ll see what happens. We’ve re-
ally got it down to probably 13,
people, and we’ll be bringing it
down a little bit more. And then
we’ll decide whether or not we’ll
be staying longer or not.”
Regarding the suicide bombing
and whether he would trust the
Taliban to police the situation, he
replied, “I’m not trusting anybody.
It’s a horrible situation that’s been
going on in Afghanistan. It has
been for many years.” The Taliban, an Afghan militia
with extremist Sunni beliefs, often
attacks military and government
targets. The Islamic State, an in-
ternational Sunni terrorist group,
is notorious for savage attacks on
civilians and views Shiites as apos-
tates. Its local affiliate, the Islamic
State in Khorasan, has claimed
numerous attacks in Kabul, many
of them in the city’s western,
Shiite-dominated districts.
President Ashraf Ghani still
blamed the Taliban in part. In a
tweet offering condolences for the
victims of the “barbaric” attack, he
said the “Taliban cannot absolve
themselves of blame, for they pro-
vide platform for terrorists.”
More than 1,000 guests were
gathered in the salon in the Dubai
City wedding hall at 11 p.m. Satur-
day. Dinner had just been served,
with male and female guests in
separate sections. In the men’s sec-
tion, loud music was pounding
and young boys were dancing near
the stage when a man posing as a
guest detonated his bomb at a
nearby table.
“There was a huge boom and
the hall went dark. People were
running and falling in all corners.
It was like doomsday,” said Sakhi
Mohammed, a guest. He was wait-
ing outside the city’s Emergency
Hospital, where his brother was
being treated for wounds.
The bride and groom survived
the blast but lost family members,including 14 on the bride’s side.
The groom, a tailor in his 20s
named Mirwais Elmi, told Kabul’s
ToloNews TV that his family was
in shock and would never recover.
“My bride keeps fainting. I lost
my brother, my friends, my rela-
tives,” Elmi said. “I never thought
such a thing would happen at my
wedding. I will never see happi-
ness in my life again.”
Jamshid Alami, a wedding sing-
er and musician, was performing
at a different event Saturday
night, but he said a group of his
brothers, cousins and friends in
the band were onstage at the
Dubai City event when the bomb
exploded. Five were killed.
Alami sobbed uncontrollably
outside the Istiqlal Hospital early
Sunday. “My brothers are gone,” he
said. “How can I take them home?
What will I tell our mother?” He
cursed Ghani, the president, say-
ing his government had failed to
protect the people.
Many of the dead and wounded
were members of the same fami-
lies, and children were reported to
be among the casualties. By Sun-
day morning, the first funerals
were being held, some for multiple
related victims.
At a funeral in a parched cem-
etery in western Kabul, Hussain
Dad, 70, watched while two young
men, both friends of the groom,
were buried in wooden coffins. A
Muslim cleric bent over the gravesand recited prayers in Arabic. Un-
marked stones were placed at the
head of each grave.
The victims were members of
the ethnic Hazara and Shiite mi-
nority, which predominates in
western Kabul.
“They were innocent young
men,” Dad said. “They had not
harmed a single fly.”
The few mourners disbanded
quickly afterward, worried about
further violence.
“The Taliban and Daesh are two
sides of the same coin,” Dad said,
using the Arabic acronym for the
Islamic State. “They used to attack
mosques, and now they have start-
ed with wedding halls.”
Western Kabul is the center of
urban commercial and residential
life for ethnic Hazaras and Shiite
Muslims. The wedding Saturday
was attended largely by Hazaras.
The bride and groom are Shiite.
The bombing was one of the
deadliest ever in the Afghan capi-
tal, which has suffered scores of
terrorist attacks in the past dec-
ade. The targets have included
military and police facilities and
convoys, places of worship, gov-
ernment offices, hotels and for-
eign compounds.
A car bombing near a police
facility a few blocks from the
Dubai City wedding hall on Aug. 7
killed 65 and wounded 145. A
truck bomb and ground attack
near government compounds on
July 28 killed 45 and wounded 116.
The worst attack was a truck
bombing in May 2017 in a diplo-
matic and official district that
killed 150 and hurt more than 400.
On Sunday afternoon, the
Dubai City hotel was silent and
empty.
Mohammed Naeem, 24, a part
owner, said he was in the hotel’s
flower shop when the bomb ex-
ploded.
“When I reached the room,
dead and wounded bodies were
piled up.”
Naeem said the group that had
booked the hotel for Sunday night
had already canceled. “Very few
people will dare to go to wedding
halls from now on,” he said.
[email protected]Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul and Felicia
Sonmez in Washington contributed to
this report.Islamic State claims bomb attack that killed at least 63 at Kabul wedding
SUNNY MOK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Despite heavy rain, protesters overflowed Victoria Park in Hong Kong on Sunday for a peaceful march after weeks of unrest. Organizers
had worried about turnout after a clash at an airport hurt the movement’s image, but they estimated that 1.7 million showed up.OMAR SOBHANI/REUTERS
Relatives embrace at a funeral for victims killed when a man posing
as a guest detonated explosives at a wedding. More than 180 were
wounded; the bride and groom survived but lost family members.Protesters defy Beijing,
police and storm as
movement regains steamTargeting of family event
strikes at heart of Afghan
capital’s social scene
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