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(800) LA TIMESFounded Dec. 4, 1881
Vol. CXXXVIII No. 246
LOS ANGELES TIMES (ISSN 0458-3035)
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RECORD
HONG KONG — Police
hunted protesters, pro-
testers and thugs hunted
each other, and residents
tried to protect themselves
at home as fires, standoffs
and outright brawls broke
out.
Hong Kong tumbled into
chaos Monday night, with
multiple neighborhoods
bathed in a neon haze of tear
gas as police, residents and
protesters clashed in simul-
taneous confrontations
across the city. Clashes un-
folded in the city’s central fi-
nancial district, business
and shopping areas, work-
ing-class neighborhoods
and rural suburbs.
The chaos came after a
day of strikes and civil dis-
obedience that had para-
lyzed much of the city’s pub-
lic transportation system
through the morning.
Hong Kong is in its ninth
week of protests, triggered
by a proposed extradition
bill that symbolized Bei-
jing’s unwanted influence on
the territory, now a move-
ment demanding govern-
ment accountability, scru-
tiny of the police and demo-
cratic reforms.
Protesters blocked sub-
way doors, pressed emer-
gency buttons in the mass
transit stations and placed
bikes, trolleys and other ob-
jects on the train tracks,
causing most of the subway
lines to be suspended during
the usual commuter rush
hour.
More than 200 flights out
of Hong Kong’s interna-
tional airport were canceled
as air traffic controllers went
on strike along with tens of
thousands of others from
more than 20 business sec-
tors.
At 10 a.m., Chief Execu-
tive Carrie Lam held a news
conference for the first time
in two weeks, blaming pro-
testers for disrupting the
workday, harming Hong
Kong’s economy and har-
boring “ulterior motives” of
revolution and Hong Kong’s
destruction.
“This is the time for us to
rally together, to set aside
differences and bring back
order and say ‘no’ to chaos
and violence,” Lam said,
adding that she had ad-
dressed protesters’ de-
mands by suspending the
extradition bill and that she
would not resign.
“I don’t think at this
point in time resignation of
myself or some of my col-
leagues will provide a better
solution,” Lam said. She
said she was sad about the
police being put under pres-
sure and did not agree to an
independent inquiry into
police violence.
By 1 p.m., tens of thou-
sands of protesters stream-
ed to seven simultaneous
rallies in blazing heat.
“No rioters, only tyranny!
Carrie Lam, step down!”
chanted thousands of pro-
testers at a sports stadium
in the busy market district of
Mong Kok. They strung up
pictures of Lam, police and
other government officials
as targets in a soccer net.
Rally organizer Ventus
Lau, 25, criticized Lam’s
speech.
“The only person who
can stop this problem is her-
self,” Lau said.
If the chief executive
would compromise and
agree to even one or two of
the protesters’ demands,
that would de-escalate the
situation, he said.
“She is the one pushing
Hong Kong to the edge ofdanger.”
Tens of thousands
flocked to a mall in the sub-
urban neighborhood of Sha
Tin, where near-daily pro-
tests have taken place since
police fought protesters in a
bloody clash in mid-July.
“Hong Kong police!” bel-
lowed Neil Chan, 30, a Sha
Tin resident, from on top of
an escalator.
“They know the law, they
break the law!” responded a
seated crowd of thousands
wearing black and waving
yellow strike signs on the
mall floor below.
“Hong Kong police need
to protect Hong Kong peo-
ple, but now they are only
fighting Hong Kong people.
What the hell?” said Chan,
who was striking from a de-
livery job.
He was livid that police
had fought with protesters
inside his neighborhood
shopping mall and that they
had failed to protect civil-
ians from an armed thug at-
tack in July.
“Police need to be puni-
shed. We need an independ-
ent committee to make them
stop the violence and stopfighting Hong Kong people,”
Chan said.
Roy Lo, 28, a Yuen Long
resident and building sur-
veyor on strike, said he’d
come to Sha Tin because he
feared his own neighbor-
hood — where thugs had at-
tacked previously — was un-
safe.
“We can see in videos that
Hong Kong police are to-
gether with these white-
shirt attackers. We cannot
accept a society run by po-
lice and thugs,” Lo said.
Two cars later drove
through protesters’ barri-
cades in Yuen Long and Sha
Tin during the rallies, injur-
ing several people.
Police began shooting
tear gas around 5 p.m. in Ad-
miralty, where protesters
had returned to the govern-
ment headquarters and leg-
islative buildings for the first
time since breaking in and
vandalizing the legislative
chamber on July 1.
This time, protesters
dashed toward the tear gas
instead of away from it,
many of them now outfitted
in helmets, goggles, gas
masks and head-to-toeblack clothing. Teams of
three or four extinguished
freshly fired canisters with
traffic cones and bottles of
water, sprinting from one to
the next even as police con-
tinued to shoot.
Two older women at a
mall next to the clashes
called themselves “silver-
haired supporters” of the
youths on the front lines.
Both had young nieces who
were out confronting the po-
lice.
Lam’s words were “non-
sense” coming from a gov-
ernment that had favored
real estate tycoons and Bei-
jing’s wishes over young peo-
ple’s futures and disquali-
fied the candidates that pro-
democracy youths elected,
said Parpmy Tan, 59, a retail
company manager on strike.
“The bill is just a trigger
point to people in Hong
Kong, especially young-
sters,” Tan said. “We’re not
just supporting the young-
sters only. We’re fighting for
ourselves. Actually, they’re
fighting for us.”
Cleo Lam, 60, a part-time
accountant on strike, said
she didn’t like “foul lan-
guage” or throwing stones
but believed young people
were pushed into these
methods, she said.
“I understand and want
to support them, because
they’re really helpless. They
can’t see their future,” Lam
said, adding that she wanted
older people to stand in front
of police if the young were all
arrested, though it might
not make a difference in the
end.
“We also feel so helpless,”
she said.
“Be water,” a Bruce Lee
quote that protesters have
adopted as their mantra,
manifested in a new way as
protesters split into more
than seven groups across
Hong Kong, popping in and
out of different locations,
building barricades and
taunting police.
They stayed just long
enough to provoke the au-
thorities, then left at a mo-
ment’s notice, chanting andchanging locations seem-
ingly at random, but in
smooth coordination.
In North Point, a neigh-
borhood on Hong Kong Is-
land known for having many
pro-Beijing residents, men
wearing white and black T-
shirts waited for protesters
to arrive, bearing bamboo
rods and wooden sticks sim-
ilar to those held by local
gangs who’d attacked pro-
testers and passersby in Yu-
en Long several weeks ago.
This time, protesters
fought back. Traffic cones,
metal street barriers and
bamboo sticks flew in the air
above the two crowds as they
brawled in the streets. Resi-
dents threw glass bottles
from overhead at the pro-
testers, who flashed lasers
back into their windows.
Across the harbor in
Kowloon and the rural sub-
urbs called the New Terri-
tories, protesters sur-
rounded police stations,
scrawling insults on the
outer walls and flashing la-
sers at dormitory windows.
Once police came out with
tear gas and pepper spray,
some protesters escalated
by throwing bricks, stones
and burning objects at po-
lice stations as well as set-
ting barricades on fire.
Some protesters re-
moved a Chinese national
flag and dumped it into Vic-
toria Harbor for the second
night in a row.
On Sunday, protesters
had also spray-painted
Hong Kong’s golden bauhin-
ia, a statue of the flower on
Hong Kong’s flag, with slo-
gans including “Reclaim
Hong Kong” and “The heav-
ens will destroy the Chinese
Communist Party.”
Many of the clashes
broke out in densely popu-
lated residential areas,
where homes of the elderly
and residents of public hous-
ing were exposed to large
amounts of tear gas. One
mother shepherded her
wailing children into an ele-
vator, sobbing as she
drenched their faces with a
bottle of water. Other resi-
dents shouted at police to
leave.
As the night deepened,
riot police shot tear gas at
protesters from rooftops in
some areas while protesters
screamed curses at them
from below.
In Sham Shui Po, a work-
ing-class neighborhood, po-
lice fired tear gas at angry
residents who protested
that they weren’t protesters.
In Tsuen Wan, a New Ter-
ritories suburb, a mob of
men attacked protesters
and passersby with knives.
In Wan Chai, a business
area on Hong Kong Island,
protesters threw Molotov
cocktails at the police head-
quarters.
Beijing’s State Council
announced that its Hong
Kong and Macao Affairs Of-
fice, China’s highest govern-
ment body for Hong Kong af-
fairs, would hold a news con-
ference Tuesday.
Hong Kong police said at
a news briefing that they had
arrested 420 people ages 14
to 76 in relation to protests
and fired 1,000 tear gas
rounds and 160 rubber bul-
lets since June 9, not includ-
ing Monday.
By late Monday, the
number of arrests had in-
creased past 500 and contin-
ued to rise.Hong Kong strike erupts into chaos
Heady stew of fires, fights and tear gas roils the city as leader Carrie Lam backs police and clings to power
PROTESTERSengage in a standoff with riot police in the Wong Tai Sin district of Hong Kong as the city
plunged into chaos amid demonstrations against an extradition bill and heightened violent clashes.Billy H.C. KwokGetty ImagesBy Alice Su
AN INJUREDman receives treatment as he sits on the street after a clash with
riot police during a pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong’s Tsuen Wan district.Philip FongAFP/Getty ImagesMexico City — Foreign
nations are warning their
citizens that traveling in the
United States could put
them at risk of becoming a
victim of a mass shooting.
A statement Monday
from Uruguay’s Foreign
Ministry warned about
“growing indiscriminate vi-
olence” in the U.S.
It urged Uruguayans
traveling there to avoid
“theme parks, shopping cen-
ters, festivals, religious
events, gastronomic fairs
and any kind of cultural or
sporting events.”
U.S. authorities are un-
able to prevent mass shoot-ings because of “indiscrimi-
nate” gun ownership, the
statement said.
Venezuela’s foreign min-
ister released a similar state-
ment, also warning its citi-
zens to avoid large gather-
ings where mass shootings
might occur.
The Japanese Consul in
Detroit on Sunday
published an alert that said
Japanese nationals “should
be aware of the potential for
gunfire incidents every-
where in the United States,”
which it described as “a gun
society.”
The advisories come af-
ter two deadly shooting
attacks in the U.S. in the
span of less than 24 hours.
First, a gunman opened
fire at a Walmart in El Paso,
killing 22 people and wound-
ing dozens of others.
Hours later, nine people
were killed when a man
sprayed bullets into a crowd
of people on a busy street inDayton, Ohio.
The shooting in El Paso
has sparked particular con-
cern from Latinos around
the world.
The suspect in that
incident allegedly drove
from Dallas to El Paso with
an intent to target Latinos.
Eight Mexican citizens
were killed in the attack, and
seven more injured,
according to Mexican For-
eign Secretary Marcelo
Ebrard.
On Monday, after touring
two hospitals where sur-
vivors were being treated,
Ebrard told journalists that
Mexico’s attorney general
may charge the suspect with
committing terrorist acts
against Mexican citizens in
the United States.
Foreign countries have
issued warnings in the past
about the propensity of
mass shootings in the U.S.,
including France, New
Zealand and Germany.El Paso police said Mon-
day that one of the victims in
the Walmart attack was a
German citizen.Countries are warning against U.S.
travel after string of mass shootings
Uruguay, Venezuela
and Japan raise issue
with gun ownership,growing violence.
By Kate Linthicum