Hong Kong protesters blockaded the city’s international airport on Sunday, capping off a weekend of chaos that involved some of the most intense clashes yet seen in the city’s nearly three month-old political crisis.
On Sunday afternoon thousands of demonstrators converged on the airport, the world’s third busiest by passenger numbers, shutting down its train shuttle service and barricading roads with shared bikes, trolleys and traffic barriers. Most flights continued operating as normal, although some travellers were unable to arrive in time for their departure. Riot police eventually cleared the crowds of protesters.
“The airport is Hong Kong’s most important economic lifeline,” said Cary, a 19-year-old student, standing in front of makeshift barricades designed to block the major road leading to the airport. “We have to try to shut it down to pressure the government.”
Riot police also entered a sub
way station near the airport after protesters smashed ticket machines and broke a fire hydrant which flooded the station. The Hong Kong authorities have been sporadically halting subway services, also known as the MTR, in recent weeks in an attempt to stymie the flow of protesters around the city.
“The MTR no longer serves Hong Kongers so we don’t need to treasure and protect it. Now the MTR just serves the Chinese Communist Party and the police,” said a 20-year-old protester holding a pole inside the station.
The airport blockade and subway destruction followed an evening of mayhem on Saturday in which protesters besieged the city’s government offices and set fire to barricades, leading police to respond with water cannons, rubber bullets, and pepper spray.
Hong Kong’s summer of discontent was triggered by a controversial extradition bill that would allow suspects to be tried in mainland China. But the protests have since broadened to include demands for an independent inquiry into the police and universal suffrage.
The protests on Saturday were organized to mark the fifth anniversary of Beijing’s rejection of full universal suffrage for the city, but they quickly degenerated into violent clashes, with protesters throwing Molotov cocktails at police and government offices.
Police also arrested at least 63 people including some inside a subway station after a scuffle broke out between protesters and other passengers on a commuter train. The territory’s elite, masked Special Tactical Contingent — known as the “raptors” — then stormed the subway station, using pepper spray and batons to attack mostly unarmed passengers, according to footage from local media.
Public outrage grew as scenes of the police violence spread on social media on Sunday, with protesters heading en masse to the international airport in an attempt to shut it down. The move echoed a similar protest at the airport last month that led to a two-day closure of the regional aviation hub.
In other incidents on Saturday evening, police fired two warning shots in the air after protesters tried to snatch their guns. This was the second weekend in a row that police have fired live ammunition.
