THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONALSUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 2020 0 N 15Hong Kong and Chinese offi-
cials by turns condemned and
mocked a Friday move by the
Trump administration to impose
sanctions on Hong Kong’s chief
executive, Carrie Lam, and 10
other senior officials for their
roles in a prolonged crackdown on
political dissent in the city.
The Hong Kong government
and several of the officials tar-
geted dismissed the impact of the
penalties, while also condemning
them as “blatant and barbaric in-
terference” in China’s domestic
political situation. The head of
China’s liaison office to Hong
Kong, Luo Huining, said on Chi-
nese media that the American ef-
forts were a waste because he had
no holdings in the United States,
adding that he could send $100 to
President Trump to give him
something to freeze.
The condemnations and dis-
missals come as relations be-
tween the United States and
China have deteriorated to a his-
torical low point, and follow on the
heels of a move on Thursday by
the Trump administration to pe-
nalize two of the most successful
apps to come out of China, TikTok
and WeChat. Analysts say there is
little hope relations will improve
in the short term, with the Ameri-
can election looming and many
Trump administration officials de-
termined to reset the relationship
between the world’s two largest
economies.
The new sanctions are the first
against officials in Hong Kong and
mainland China over the city’s
harsh suppression of pro-democ-
racy protests, and are yet another
indication that the United States
has begun to treat Hong Kong as
simply another Chinese city. Last
month, Mr. Trump also signed an
executive order punishing China
for its crackdown on Hong Kong,
after Beijing imposed a national
security law on the city in June
that granted extensive powers to
security agencies and penalized
some forms of political speech.
On Friday Treasury Depart-
ment officials said that Hong
Kong’s chief executive, Carrie
Lam, was being penalized be-
cause she was “directly responsi-
ble” for enacting policies from Bei-
jing to crush dissent in the city.
Addressing the prospect of sanc-
tions last month, Mrs. Lam said
she would laugh off any penaltiesand said she had no assets in the
United States.
In a sarcastic response posted
on Facebook on Saturday, Mrs.
Lam questioned why, in publish-
ing her personal details, the
United States had gotten her ad-
dress wrong, adding she believed
it was because she’d written a pre-
vious address down in an applica-
tion for a visa to visit the United
States in June 2016.
“If my guess is correct, it’s
worth discussing whether my per-
sonal information for visa applica-
tion, handed over to the Treasury
Department for purposes other
than entry, has violated the pro-
tection of human rights,” she
wrote, adding that she had no de-
sire to return to the United States.
Still the sanctions are likely to
hit her and other officials in less
obvious ways.
On Saturday, Facebook said in a
statement that it had “taken steps
to prevent the use of payments
services” for individuals on the
list. That would mean Mrs. Lam
can no longer buy advertising on
Facebook or any of its other apps.
Credit cards could present an-
other problem. Even if money is
kept outside the United States,
funds processed by Visa or Mas-tercard could also be affected.
Visa did not immediately respond
to questions about the impact of
the measures. A Mastercard
spokesman said the company was
reviewing the action to “under-
stand the impact it may have on
any financial institution licensed
to access” its network.
In a public letter issued to Mrs.
Lam on Saturday, an official at the
Hong Kong Monetary Authority
said that the sanctions had no le-
gal standing in Hong Kong.
The penalties stopped short of
hitting the highest level of Chinese
officials, who ultimately make the
key policy decisions about Hong
Kong. Last month, when the ad-
ministration imposed sanctions
on Chinese officials over rights
abuses against the largely Muslim
Uighur ethnic minority in the
country’s west, it included one
member of the Communist Party’s
ruling Politburo.
Hong Kong’s government hit
out at the new sanctions and used
them to bolster claims that the
United States has been interfering
in Hong Kong politics. It released
a statement using rhetoric char-
acteristic of officials in Beijing:
“The U.S. government’s claim that
the imposition of the so-called
‘sanctions’ was in response to theenactment of the national security
law in Hong Kong is a lame excuse
that could hardly stand up to chal-
lenge.”
Hong Kong’s government also
took particular issue with the re-
lease of personal information, in-
cluding the addresses and identifi-
cation numbers of the officials pe-
nalized.
“Such a deplorable move is no
less than state-sanctioned
doxxing that is a serious breach of
privacy and personal safety,” the
government said in a statement.
“We reserve the right to take any
necessary legal action,” it warned,
adding that Hong Kong’s govern-
ment would “adopt countermeas-
ures.”
Another official targeted by the
administration, Eric Chan, said he
and his family had “no fears”
about the punishment. And Hong
Kong’s secretary for commerce
and economic development, Ed-
ward Yau, said that he believed
the measures would backfire
against the United States, creat-
ing confusion for American com-
panies based in the city.
He called the sanctions “unrea-
sonable and barbarous,” saying
that in the long run they will harm
American interests in Hong Kong.In recent months the Trump ad-
ministration has taken a series of
measures that have heightened
tensions with China and pushed
back against newly aggressive
moves by Beijing to exert its influ-
ence in the region.
Last month, Mr. Trump issued
an executive order that ended the
special status that the United
States had granted Hong Kong in
diplomatic and trade relations.
The Trump administration also
arrested officers or affiliates of
the People’s Liberation Army in
the United States on accusations
of fraud, and banned students as-
sociated with some military insti-
tutions.
Officials also shut down the Chi-
nese consulate in Houston, citing
economic espionage efforts by
diplomats there. Hitting back, Bei-
jing forced the closure of the U.S.
consulate in the central Chinese
city of Chengdu.
Such tit-for-tat actions are
likely to continue. In May, the ad-
ministration imposed a 90-day
limit on stays for Chinese citizens
in the United States on journalism
visas, ultimately requiring all Chi-
nese journalists to apply for visa
renewal last week. U.S. officials
are expected not to renew many of
the visas.Hong Kong Calls New U.S. Sanctions ‘Blatant and Barbaric Interference’
By PAUL MOZURLin Qiqing and Elaine Yu contrib-
uted research.
NEW DELHI — The sky had
turned black.
Rain smeared the windows.
Air India Express Flight 1344
was midair, roaring through a
thunderstorm toward the city of
Kozhikode’s tabletop runway,
which has a sudden drop-off at its
end and was known to be poten-
tially dangerous.
The pilot, a decorated military
flier, circled the airport once, then
twice. With visibility so bad, he ra-
dioed the control tower to switch
runways.
On his second attempt at land-
ing Friday night, he apparently hit
Runway 10 too late — more than a
half mile into the 1.6-mile strip —
and with the wind at his back,
which was exactly the scenario
that Indian aviation experts had
warned against.
“All the flights that land on Run-
way 10 in tailwind conditions in
rain are endangering the lives of
all on board,” said a report sub-
mitted to India’s civil aviation au-
thorities in 2011.
The plane, a Boeing 737 that
was returning to southern India
from Dubai, slid right off the rain-
slicked runway, tumbled down a
hillside and split in half. Indian of-
ficials say that 18 people, includ-
ing both pilots, were killed and
more than 150 injured.
The plane was carrying 190 peo-
ple. Rescue crews, including
many villagers, rushed to the
crash site within minutes and
pulled people out. The plane ap-
parently never caught fire; the re-
lentless rain may have dampened
any sparks.
Survivors said they knew some-
thing was wrong the instant the
wheels hit the ground.
“The plane landed at such a
high speed and then braked really
hard,” said Latheesh Muttooly,
who was sitting by a window.
“There’s usually a jerk when you
land, but this was much harder
and then suddenly the plane
started going faster.”
The overhead bins burst open.
Heavy pieces of luggage fell on
people’s heads.
“The next thing I heard was a
loud crashing sound, the loudest
sound I’ve ever heard,” Mr. Mut-
tooly said.
His face smashed into the seat
back in front of him, in Row 15,
splitting open his chin. He was
dazed.
“When I opened my eyes and
looked around,” he said, “there
was only one row in front of me.”
The front of the plane had torn
off.
With the crash investigation
just starting, Indian aviation offi-
cials are already beginning to pin
the blame on the pilot.
“The basic problem, as we un-derstand it in this incident, is that
on a runway of 8,500 feet, the
plane landed after crossing one
third of the strip, beyond 3,
feet,” Arun Kumar, director gen-
eral of civil aviation, said in an in-
terview. “What normally happens
under such conditions is that the
pilot does a go-round and either
tries to land again or not land at
all, given the weather conditions.
Touchdown must happen within
the first 500 feet of the strip.”
“The rules of aviation are too
well laid out,” Mr. Kumar added.
“Either the pilot goes around or
should not have landed at all.”
The crash was very similar to
another, much deadlier Indian air
accident at a tabletop runway in
2010, which had prompted a closerlook at similar hilltop runways. In-
dia has around four to five of them,
officials said.
The 2010 crash involved the
same kind of plane, a Boeing 737
belonging to the same airline, Air
India Express, and a similar run-
way with steep gorges on each
side. In that case, the aircraft skid-
ded off a hill in Mangalore, fell into
a valley and burst into flames.
More than 150 people were killed.
After that, the Indian civil avia-
tion ministry formed a safety ad-
visory council that included avia-
tion experts such as Capt. Mohan
Ranganathan, a pilot who wrote
the 2011 report warning that Ko-
zhikode’s Runway 10 was danger-
ous. Some of his recommenda-
tions, like adding a safety zone atthe end of the runway, were
heeded, at least in part.
But on Saturday, Captain Ran-
ganathan said in an interview that
he was dismayed to learn that the
pilot tried to land in the very cir-
cumstances that he had warned
about. “Landing in rain with a tail-
wind is the most dangerous way
you can think of landing,” he said,
especially on Kozhikode’s Run-
way 10.
The captain, Deepak Sathe, a
former Indian Air Force test pilot,
seems to have misjudged the dis-
tance he needed to bring the plane
to a halt.
This is monsoon season, the
time of year of lashing rains, and
Captain Sathe was trying to bring
down a plane in the middle of a tor-
rential downpour. For the past
several days, Kerala State, where
Kozhikode is, and which has a long
history of ties to the Persian Gulf,
has been drenched.
India’s meteorological depart-
ment had issued a red alert for
several areas, including Kozhi-
kode, on Friday. Earlier that day,
more than 20 people were killed in
a landslide in another part of the
state after a hillside of rock and
sludge crashed into a workers’
hostel on a tea plantation.
The way onboard announce-
ments were made didn’t help, pas-
sengers said. The cabin crew used
Hindi and English, India’s most
widely spoken languages. But this
was a special repatriation flight,
run by the Indian government torescue citizens who stranded in
the Persian Gulf during the coro-
navirus pandemic. Most pas-
sengers were working-class peo-
ple (and their families) from Ker-
ala State who had been perform-
ing jobs such as clearing tables or
driving trucks. They spoke Mala-
yalam, Kerala’s tongue.
“They had no idea they had to
keep wearing their seatbelts,”
said Riyas Madaparambathu, an-
other passenger, who had been
working at a restaurant in Dubai.
He said more lives might have
been saved if the crew had made
the announcements in Malaya-
lam.
On Saturday, officials said they
had found the aircraft’s black box.
Most of the surviving passengers
remained in more than a dozen
hospitals. Indian media reported
that after some had tested pos-
itive for coronavirus, survivors
were not allowed to leave the hos-
pitals just yet.
“The flight had been going fine,”
said Muhammed Ali Meethal, who
spoke by phone from his hospital
bed. “The pilot announced that we
were going to land. There was no
warning or signal of any kind of
impending doom.”
But after the plane skittered off
the runway and down the hillside,
he said, “There was a thud. And
then a complete silence. I could
smell death.”
“I want to erase these memo-
ries,” he said, breaking into tears.
“I need to keep the fear aside.”Hari Kumar contributed report-
ing.
Pilot, Storm and Notoriously Perilous Runway Are Cited in Fatal India Crash
This article is by Jeffrey Gettle-
man, Suhasini Rajand Shalini
Venugopal Bhagat.
Eighteen people died Friday night in a crash in Kozhikode, India.SHIJITH SREEDHAR/ASSOCIATED PRESSBEIRUT, Lebanon — Violent
clashes between demonstrators
and security forces transformed
much of central Beirut into a bat-
tle zone of flying rocks, swinging
batons and clouds of tear gas on
Saturday, as the fury over a huge
explosion in Beirut’s port this
week fueled attacks on govern-
ment buildings.
By nightfall, angry protesters
demanding the ouster of the coun-
try’s political elite had stormed
three government ministries, a
handful of legislators had re-
signed, and the prime minister
had called for early elections, the
first major signs that the blast
could shake up the country’s polit-
ical system, widely derided as
dysfunctional.
Many Lebanese considered the
blast, which sent a shock wave
through the capital that destroyed
entire neighborhoods and killed at
least 154 people, as only the latest
and most dangerous manifesta-
tion of the corruption and negli-
gence of the country’s leaders.
The clashes on Saturday
erupted across broad swaths of
the city’s center, with demonstra-
tors yanking down barricades
blocking access to the Parliament,
chanting “Revolution! Revolu-
tion!,” and throwing rocks at the
security forces, who flooded the
area with tear gas and fired rub-
ber bullets. Fires burned in
nearby buildings, filling the sky
with smoke, and sirens screamed
as ambulances rushed the scores
of people injured in the clashes to
hospitals.
“Haven’t they quenched their
thirst for blood? We came here
peacefully, and they do this?”
Rasha Habbal, a 21-year-old stu-
dent who had come to protest with
her 57-year-old mother, said of the
security forces. Both women had
been tear-gassed.
“Either they go and we stay, or
they stay and we leave,” Ms. Hab-
bal said of the country’s leaders.
Elsewhere in the city, about 200
protesters, including a group of
retired military officers, took over
the Foreign Ministry building for
a number of hours. They hung red
banners with a raised fist from the
building, which had been dam-
aged in the blast, and proclaimed
Beirut a “disarmed” city. The
group left the building after the
army arrived.
Throughout the day, many thou-
sands of people gathered to dem-
onstrate in the central Martyrs’
Square, which is not far from the
blast site and is surrounded by of-
fice buildings and an upscale pe-
destrian shopping mall, both of
which had windows shattered by
the explosion.
Anger at the country’s top poli-
ticians was tangible, and many
protesters carried signs reading
“hang up the nooses.” Demonstra-
tors erected gallows and con-
ducted ceremonial hangings of
cardboard cutouts of President
Michel Aoun, Nabih Berri, the
speaker of Parliament, and Has-
san Nasrallah, the secretary-gen-
eral of Hezbollah, the powerful
militant group and political party.
“Terrorists, terrorists! Hezbol-
lah are terrorists!” some chanted.
The square, which is also close
to the Parliament, has been the
central site of protests that have
flared since last fall demanding
the removal of the country’s top
politicians. Many of Saturday’s
protesters said it was anger at
what they had lost in the blast that
had driven them back into the
streets.
“I lost my house, my car, my job,
I lost friends,” said a protester,
Eddy Gabriel, who carried a photo
of two neighbors who had died in
the blast. “There is nothing to be
afraid of. Everything is gone.”
Lebanon was already grappling
with an array of crises before this
week’s explosion, as the economy
has sunk, banks have refused to
give depositors access to their
money, and unemployment and
inflation have soared. In the
weeks before the blast, the num-
ber of coronavirus cases reported
daily had begun to spike, and
many parts of the country weresuffering from lengthy power
cuts.
But the explosion, and indica-
tions that it was rooted in govern-
mental neglect, have pushed ten-
sions to the boiling point.
Lebanese officials have said the
explosion on Tuesday happened
when 2,750 tons of ammonium ni-
trate, a compound often used to
make fertilizer and bombs, com-
busted, perhaps because of a fire
started by welders working
nearby. The industrial chemical
had been stored in the port since
2014.
The dead included 43 Syrians,
the Syrian state news agency said
on Saturday. Lebanon hosts about
one million Syrian refugees, and
many other Syrians live and work
in the country.
The blast injured some 5,
people and pushed at least
250,000 from their homes. The
prime minister has vowed to in-
vestigate it and hold all those who
were behind it accountable, but
doubts that justice will be doneabound in a country with a long
history of civil strife and assassi-
nations whose perpetrators were
never prosecuted.
President Aoun on Friday said
the blast could have been caused
by a bomb or “foreign interfer-
ence,” without providing details or
evidence.
In a televised speech, Mr. Nas-
rallah denied his group had any
connection to the chemicals, the
blast or the port.
Hezbollah, which is backed by
Iran and has sent fighters to help
keep President Bashar al-Assad
of Syria in power, is widely be-
lieved to use the port to smuggle
and store weapons. But no evi-
dence has surfaced linking the
group to the chemicals or the ex-
plosion.
Over the course of Saturday’s
protests, some demonstrators
broke into the Economy Ministry,
where they sent papers raining
down onto the sidewalk, and oth-
ers made it into the Energy Min-
istry. On the wall of the Associa-tion of Banks in Lebanon, some-
one had spray painted “fallen” in
Arabic.
Siding with the protesters, four
members of Parliament resigned
on Saturday. Sami Gemayel, the
head of Kataeb, a Christian oppo-
sition party, said its three legisla-
tors had quit and called on others
to resign for the “birth of a new
Lebanon.”
Paula Yacoubian, an independ-
ent member of Parliament, also
resigned, she confirmed in a text
message.
In a televised speech, Prime
Minister Hassan Diab said he
would ask his cabinet on Monday
to approve early parliamentary
elections.
But those moves fell well short
of the sweeping changes to how
the country is run that protesters
have demanded.
While government assistance
to the blast victims has been min-
imal, foreign aid has streamed in,
along with technicians and
medics who are helping identifybuildings at risk of collapsing and
treating the wounded.
The office of President Emman-
uel Macron of France announced
that an international aid summit
will be held by video conference
on Sunday, co-hosted by France
and the United Nations.
Mr. Macron was the first foreign
leader to visit Lebanon since the
blast, and he walked through
some of the hardest hit areas to
speak with residents, something
that Lebanon’s own president and
prime minister have not done,
likely to avoid becoming the tar-
gets of public anger.
The United States is providing
more than $15 million in aid, and
President Trump said on Friday
that he would join Sunday’s video-
conference.
Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the head of
the Arab League, said on Satur-
day that he would seek to mobilize
support from Arab countries after
meeting with President Aoun.
“We are ready to help with all
our means,” Mr. Aboul Gheit said.Lebanese protesters clashed with security forces in downtown Beirut on Saturday in fury over the deadly blast in the city’s port.PATRICK BAZ/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGESOutrage Over Explosion
Erupts at Beirut Protests
By BEN HUBBARD
and MONA EL-NAGGARGeorgi Azar and Kareem
Chehayeb contributed reporting.