Hong Kong introduces emergency powers to ban face masks at protests - NBC News

Hong Kong will ban face masks at public demonstrations as part of emergency powers announced Friday, as sometimes violent pro-democracy protests continue in the semiautonomous territory.

Carrie Lam, the city's Beijing-backed leader, told a press conference that the the ban on face masks, which are worn by many protesters to hide their identities, would come into effect at midnight local time.

Before the new rule was confirmed, protests against it began across the Asian financial hub, with hundreds of office workers wearing masks gathering to march.

Many people in Hong Kong wear masks on a daily basis to protect themselves from colds and flu, and it was not clear how the government planned to enforce the ban.

"After so many months the government has refused to answer our demands," said one protester, who asked to be identified as just Chan, at a demonstration in the city's Central district.

A protester wears a gas mask and holds up his hand to represent the five demands in Hong Kong on Friday.Vincent Thian / AP

"Police brutality is becoming more serious and the set up of an anti-mask law is to threaten us from protesting," said the 27-year-old financial industry worker.

Prominent activist Joshua Wong tweeted that Friday's announcement could lead to further powers, such as arbitrary arrest.

1/ It is no less harmful than the extradition bill as virtually the law gives CE mighty power to impose whatever she & Beijing like to — more arbitrary arrest and search, extending dention to 96 hours or more, banning internet access, de facto martial laws are highly expected.

— Joshua Wong 黃之鋒 (@joshuawongcf) October 4, 2019

Anti-government protests have gripped the former British colony for months, plunging it into its biggest political crisis in decades and posing a popular challenge to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The protesters are angry about what they see as creeping interference by Beijing in their city's affairs despite a promise of autonomy in the "one country, two systems" formula under which Hong Kong returned to China in 1997.

China dismisses accusations it is meddling and has accused foreign governments, including the United States and Britain, of stirring up anti-China sentiment.

What began as opposition to a proposed extradition law, which that could have seen people sent for trial in mainland courts but has now been shelved, has grown into a call for five demands, including universal suffrage and an inquiry into alleged police brutality.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam attends a news conference to discuss sweeping emergency laws at government office in Hong Kong on Friday.ATHIT PERAWONGMETHA / Reuters

Protesters, some wearing gas masks and helmets, marched past some of the city's most expensive real estate including British bank HSBC's head office, on Friday, calling out for "five demands, not one less".

The protests have been inflamed by the police shooting of a teenaged secondary school student on Tuesday during a clash, and more rallies are expected later in the evening and over the weekend.

Police said the officer involved in the shooting acted in self-defense because his life was under threat. The teenager, the first protester hit by live fire during months of unrest, remains in hospital in a stable condition.

Riot police moved in to districts across Hong Kong overnight, firing tear gas at a chanting crowd in a residential area, while rail operator MTR Corp shut several stations as violence escalated.

Patrick Smith

Patrick Smith is a London-based editor and reporter from NBC News Digital.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hong-kong-introduces-emergency-powers-ban-face-masks-protests-n1062301

2019-10-04 07:22:00Z
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Why China is the worst country Trump could ask for a favor - CNN

That was the reaction of a Chinese diplomat to the revelation that United States President Donald Trump had urged Beijing to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter for their business dealings in China.

But the diplomat wasn't simply expressing a desire to avoid what is turning into an increasingly messy scandal that could dominate the run-up to the 2020 election -- but a foundational tenet of Chinese foreign policy.

Since the 1950s, China has operated on the principle of non-interference in other country's internal affairs. Indeed, many of Beijing's grievances with other countries arise from the perception that they are doing just that, stirring up dissent and encouraging protests or separatism.

In a call with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump seemed to confirm China's worst suspicions about the US in this regard. According to two people familiar with the discussion, Trump promised to remain quiet on ongoing anti-government unrest in Hong Kong if trade talks progressed (they haven't, and he hasn't).

Whether China actually sticks to its principles of non-interference is highly debatable. But the idea that Beijing would ever agree openly to a tit-for-tat deal on something like the Biden investigation represents a major misunderstanding of how Chinese politics works, and perhaps provides a clue why Trump has failed to make any breakthroughs in other areas with Beijing.

Self-serving policy

China's policy of non-interference dates back to the Sino-Soviet split of 1956, which redefined the Cold War as a tripolar dispute and set the stage for rapprochement between Beijing and Washington.

Under the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, China -- along with other non-aligned powers like India and Myanmar -- agreed to uphold "mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence."

In the years and decades after the principles were first expounded, China went to war with both India and Vietnam, fought a border conflict with the Soviet Union, massively expanded its military and territorial footprint in the South China Sea, and repeatedly threatened to invade Taiwan.

But despite many of the other principles being openly contravened, non-interference has remained a key public tenet of Chinese foreign policy -- both in terms of what it claims to practice, and what it demands of allies and rivals.

At the United Nations for example, where the People's Republic of China has sat on the Security Council since 1971, Beijing has worked to "move away from human rights-related civil developmental goals to economic development as the main aim," according to a recent report on China's role at the UN.

It has also repeatedly voted against any external interference in other countries' affairs. Beijing was a strong critic of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, though it initially supported action against Saddam Hussein in the 1990s following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

In 2007, Beijing joined with Moscow in vetoing any criticism of Myanmar on its human rights record; the following year both also vetoed sanctions against Zimbabwe, as they have multiple times with regard to Syria. China has also been the strongest check at the UN on any action against North Korea's nuclear ambitions, restraining what the international community can do and when.

This has remained consistent even as Beijing has increased its own role in peacekeeping efforts overseas, expanded its military footprint to Africa and throughout Asia, and lobbied country after country to drop support for Taiwan in favor of China.

"China appears to have struck a most convenient -- and shrewd -- balance of selective legitimate foreign intervention and soft power efforts, while at the same time maintaining the capacity to both veto Security Council resolutions as it sees fit and shake off any reproach of its domestic policies and strategies," according to Sherif A. Elgebeily, director of the London-based Center for the Study of International Peace and Security.

Tactical misstep

While it is often couched in noble terms, the principle of non-interference is all about China avoiding criticism of or meddling in its own policies. From Beijing's perspective, whatever other countries think about its actions in Xinjiang, Tibet or Hong Kong, their responsibility or ability to do anything about them stops at China's borders.

Speaking at the United Nations last month, Foreign Minister Wang Yi spelled this out, saying "if the China-US relationship is to remain stable, it is most important that we respect each other's territorial sovereignty, social system and development path, and try not to impose one's will or model on the other."

"China will never interfere in the internal affairs of the United States, and we trust that the American people are capable of sorting out their own problems," Wang said. "Likewise, we expect the US to treat China in the same spirit and not interfere in China's internal affairs."

That's why it is so bizarre -- and such a potential tactical misstep -- for Trump to ask China, both in private and now openly, to investigate one of his potential electoral rivals.

Beijing may not stick to its principles in practice, and indeed there is plenty of evidence that China runs the type of influence campaigns and behind-the-scenes diplomacy that both Moscow and Washington are adept at, but it is never going to acknowledge this publicly or agree to a tit-for-tat deal.

Doing so would open the door to foreign interference in China's own affairs, one that Beijing has spent decades trying to jam shut as hard as possible.

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/04/asia/china-trump-biden-intl-hnk/index.html

2019-10-04 06:29:00Z
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Hong Kong Takes Symbolic Stand Against China’s High-Tech Controls - The New York Times

HONG KONG — There’s no sign to mark it. But when travelers from Hong Kong cross into Shenzhen in mainland China, they reach a digital cut-off point.

On the Hong Kong side, the internet is open and unfettered. On the China side, connections wither behind filters and censors that block foreign websites and scrub social media posts. The walk is short, but the virtual divide is huge.

This invisible but stark technological wall has loomed as Hong Kong’s protests smolder into their fourth month. The semiautonomous city’s proximity to a society that is increasingly closed off and controlled by technology has informed protesters’ concerns about Hong Kong’s future. For many, one fear is the city will fall into a shadow world of surveillance, censorship and digital controls that many have had firsthand experience with during regular travels to China.

The protests are a rare rebellion against Beijing’s vision of tech-backed authoritarianism. Unsurprisingly, they come from the only major place in China that sits outside its censorship and surveillance.

The symbols of revolt are rife. Umbrellas, which became an emblem of protests in Hong Kong five years ago when they were used to deflect pepper spray, are now commonly deployed to shield protester activities — and sometimes violence — from the digital eyes of cameras and smartphones. In late July, protesters painted black the lenses of cameras in front of Beijing’s liaison office in the city.

Since then, Hong Kong protesters have smashed cameras to bits. In the subway, cameras are frequently covered in clear plastic wrapping, an attempt to protect a hardware now hunted. In August, protesters pulled down a smart lamppost out of fear it was equipped with artificial-intelligence-powered surveillance software. (Most likely it was not.) The moment showed how at times the protests in Hong Kong are responding not to the realities on the ground, but fears of what could happen under stronger controls by Beijing.

This week, as protesters confronted the police in some of the most intense clashes since the unrest began in June, umbrellas were opened to block the view of police helicopters flying overhead. Some people got creative, handing out reflective mylar to stick on goggles to make them harder to film.

“Before, Hong Kong wouldn’t be using cameras to surveil citizens. To destroy the cameras and the lampposts is a symbolic way to protest,” said Stephanie Cheung, a 20-year-old university student and protester who stood nearby as others bashed the lens out of a dome camera at a subway stop last month. “We are saying we don’t need this surveillance.”

“Hong Kong, step by step, is walking the road to becoming China,” she said.

Hong Kong’s situation shows how China’s approach to technology has created new barriers to its goals, even as it has helped ensure the Communist Party’s grip on power.

In building a sprawling censorship and surveillance apparatus, China has separated itself from broader global norms. Most people — including in Hong Kong — still live in a world that looks technologically more like the United States than China, where services like Facebook, Google and Twitter are blocked. With much of culture and entertainment happening on smartphones, China faces the challenge of asking Hong Kong citizens to give up their main way of digital life.

Image

Protesters pulling down a smart lamppost during an anti-government rally in August.CreditAnthony Kwan/Getty Images

In the mainland, President Xi Jinping has strengthened an already muscular tech-powered censorship and surveillance system.

The government has spent billions to knit together sprawling networks that pull from facial-recognition and phone-tracking systems. Government apps are used to check phones, register people and enforce discipline within the Chinese Communist Party. The internet police have been empowered to question the outspoken and the small, but significant, numbers of people who use software to circumvent the internet filters and get on sites like Twitter.

“One country, two systems” — the shorthand to describe China’s and Hong Kong’s separate governance structures — has brought with it one country, two internets.

Undoing that is an ask that is too large for many. Apps like the Chinese messaging service WeChat, which some in Hong Kong use, in part to connect to people across the border, have garnered suspicion. Gum Cheung, 43, an artist and curator who travels to China for work, said he abandoned WeChat last year after he noticed some messages he sent to friends were not getting through.

“We have to take the initiative to hold the line. The whole internet of mainland China is under government surveillance,” he said.

The Cyberspace Administration of China did not respond to a faxed request for comment about the impact of internet censorship. The Hong Kong police did not respond to questions about their use of surveillance during the protests.

Beijing’s approach has sometimes encouraged the fears. In recent months, playing to a push from China’s government, Hong Kong’s airline carrier Cathay Pacific scrutinized the communications of its employees to ensure they do not participate in the protests. Twitter and Facebook took down accounts in what they said was an information campaign out of China to change political opinions in Hong Kong.

The debate over why, how, and who watches who has at times descended into a self-serving back-and-forth between the police and protesters.

The Hong Kong police have arrested people based on their digital communications and ripped phones out of the hands of unwitting targets to gain access to their electronics. Sites have also been set up to try to identify protesters based on their social media accounts. More recently, the police have requested data on bus passengers to pinpoint escaping protesters.

Protesters have called for the police to release footage showing what they alleged were abuses at Hong Kong’s Prince Edward subway station in Kowloon in August. Hong Kong’s subway operator fired back, pointing out that cameras that might have gotten the footage were destroyed by protesters. Other than a few screenshots, they have not released footage.

“Trust in institutions is what separates Hong Kong from China,” said Lokman Tsui, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “The fast-eroding trust in the government and law enforcement, and concurrently the growing fear and paranoia about government surveillance, is what makes Hong Kong society more and more like China’s.”

Privacy concerns on both sides have driven efforts to maintain real-life anonymity. Police officers have stopped wearing badges with names or numbers. Protesters have covered their faces with masks. Both sides are carrying out increasingly sophisticated attempts to identify the other online.

Each even has a matching, if often ineffective, countermeasure to video surveillance. Protesters shine laser pointers at lenses of police cameras to help hide themselves. Police officers have strobing lights attached to their uniforms that can make it hard to capture their images.

“Of course we’re worried about the cameras,” said Tom Lau, 21, a college student. “If we lose, the cameras recorded what we’ve done, and they can bide their time and settle the score whenever they want.”

“We still have decades in front of us,” he said. “There will be a record. Even if we don’t want to work for the government, what if big companies won’t hire us?”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/technology/hong-kong-china-tech-surveillance.html

2019-10-03 11:11:00Z
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Iraq protests: Shots fired as demonstrators defy Baghdad curfew - BBC News

Security forces in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, have fired live rounds at protesters defying a curfew.

The prime minister says the open-ended curfew - which has been in place since dawn - is needed to maintain order and protect protesters from "infiltrators".

At least 18 people have been killed since Tuesday in clashes with security forces in Baghdad and other cities.

Thousands have been taking to the streets to show their anger at the lack of jobs, poor services and corruption.

The protests, which appear to lack any organised leadership, are the largest since Adel Abdul Mahdi became prime minister a year ago.

The United Nations and the United States have expressed concern at the violence and urged the Iraqi authorities to exercise restraint.

What is the latest?

After two days of protests in Baghdad, the government imposed an indefinite curfew that started at 05:00 (02:00 GMT) and applied to everyone but people travelling to and from the capital's airport, ambulances, and religious pilgrims.

Security forces blocked major roads and bridges. Access to the internet was also limited, making it harder to organise protests on social media.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

But several dozen protesters still managed to reach Tahrir Square - the focus of the recent unrest - on Thursday morning before being dispersed by police firing tear gas and shots in the air.

"Despite the curfew we are going out to protest, to demand our rights. We want to change the regime," one protester told Reuters news agency.

"They have arrested our people. They have done things to our people they did not even do to Daesh [the jihadist group Islamic State]. They have beaten them up and humiliated them while firing live gunfire," he added. "What did we do? Are we suicide bombers?"

More from Iraq:

Overnight, explosions were heard in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, where government offices and foreign embassies are located.

The US-led coalition fighting the jihadist group Islamic State in Iraq said none of its facilities were hit and that Iraqi security forces were investigating the blasts.

Police and medical sources told Reuters that 11 people were killed overnight during protests in two cities south-west of Baghdad.

Seven protesters and a policeman died in Nasiriya, in Dhi Qar province, and four people died in Amara, in Maysan province, the sources said.

Separately, masked gunmen shot dead a well-known activist and his wife in the southern city of Basra. It was not clear who was behind the attack.

What has the government said?

On Tuesday evening, Prime Minister Abdul Mahdi expressed regret for the violence and promised an investigation "to learn the reasons" behind the protests.

"It saddens me and breaks our hearts the injuries among the protesters, our sons, and the security forces and the destruction and looting of public and private properties," he wrote on Facebook.

He added: "We stress to the people of our nation that our priorities were and will remain focused on providing radical realistic solutions to many of the decades-long accumulated problems."

What triggered the unrest?

The protests appear to be the result of a spontaneous upwelling of frustration at Iraq's high youth unemployment rate, its dire public services and chronic corruption.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Simona Foltyn, a journalist based in Baghdad, told the BBC's World Update programme: "All of the demonstrators I have spoken to so far have said that these protests are a grassroots movement, comprised of a variety of people - men, women, graduates, the unemployed, the elderly - who are all airing grievances that have accumulated over the past years."

"They have all denied the involvement of any political party. They are, in fact, extremely disenfranchised and disappointed with the political establishment here."

She added: "All of the people who are protesting seem to be united in one thing: they want a better life. They want services, they want jobs, and they want living standards to go up."

Last year, the southern Iraqi city of Basra was rocked by weeks of protests over unsafe drinking water, power shortages, unemployment and corruption. Government offices, including the main provincial council building, were set alight.

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49919919

2019-10-03 10:31:51Z
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Iraq protests: Shots fired as demonstrators defy Baghdad curfew - BBC News

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Security forces in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, have fired live rounds at protesters defying a curfew.

The prime minister says the open-ended curfew - which has been in place since dawn - is needed to maintain order and protect protesters from "infiltrators".

At least 13 people have been killed since Tuesday in clashes with security forces in Baghdad and other cities.

Thousands have been taking to the streets to show their anger at the lack of jobs, poor services and corruption.

The protests, which appear to lack any organised leadership, are the largest since Adel Abdul Mahdi became prime minister a year ago.

The United Nations and the United States have expressed concern at the violence and urged the Iraqi authorities to exercise restraint.

Overnight, explosions were heard in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, where government offices and foreign embassies are located.

The US-led coalition fighting the jihadist group Islamic State in Iraq said none of its facilities were hit and that Iraqi security forces were investigating the blasts.

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49919919

2019-10-03 09:59:17Z
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Trump’s impeachment defiance spooks key voting blocs - POLITICO

President Donald Trump was in trouble with women voters long before House Democrats launched a formal impeachment inquiry against him last week. Since then, his standing has grown only worse.

Nearly a half-dozen polls conducted since last Tuesday, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi directed her colleagues to proceed with pursuing Trump for potentially impeachable offenses, have shown women voters rallying behind her decision, exacerbating concerns among White House allies that white women who helped carry Trump to victory in 2016 can no longer be counted on next November.

Story Continued Below

The development comes as independent voters and college-educated whites — two more demographic groups that could make or break Trump’s reelection bid — have shown signs of softening their resistance to impeachment. Taken together, the latest polls paint an alarming picture for the president, whose base is sticking by him but cannot be counted on by themselves to deliver him a second term.

As more voters digest the allegations against Trump — that he asked Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 presidential election — both parties are likely to gain a clearer picture of where the public stands on impeachment. And more indications that support for impeachment is trending in Democrats’ favor could spur a moment of reckoning for Republicans on Capitol Hill. Should impeachment gain the support of an undeniable majority, Republicans who previously declined to distance themselves from the president could quickly change their calculus — setting Trump on the same lonely course that led to President Richard Nixon’s Watergate-era resignation in August 1974.

“From my point of view as a Republican pollster, the president’s base has been solid so far,” said Micah Roberts, a partner at Public Opinion Strategies, which oversaw an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted last week. “But college-educated whites have electoral significance for us in the suburbs and can completely shift the dynamic and the conversation just by virtue of shifting the overall numbers.”

In some cases, that shift has already begun.

Back-to-back polls this week found greater support for the impeachment proceedings than opposition among white voters with college degrees — a group that backed Trump over Hillary Clinton by a slightly greater margin in 2016, according to publicly available exit data. Fifty percent of college-educated whites in an NPR/Marist College survey said they approved of House Democrats’ decision to launch the formal impeachment inquiry into Trump. That compares to a narrower margin of support for the move, 45-43, in a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday.

“If you look at college-educated whites, those are probably some of the most engaged voters. They are a big and important chunk of the electorate and they have shifted the most resolutely toward impeachment so far,” Roberts said.

Even more dangerous for the president and his allies is the apparent groundswell of support for impeachment among women — including self-described independents, white women with college degrees and women in suburban communities. Five polls conducted since last Tuesday have shown majorities of women endorsing Democratic efforts to remove Trump from office, ranging from 57 percent of registered female voters who strongly or somewhat approve of impeachment in a CBS survey released Sunday to 62 percent of women in a Quinnipiac University survey released Monday who said they think “Trump believes he is above the law.”

The POLITICO/Morning Consult poll found a 15-point gap between independent women who support impeachment (48 percent) and voters within the same demographic who oppose it (33 percent). A similar gap emerged in the NPR/Marist survey among suburban women, 57 percent of whom said they support the impeachment inquiry versus 39 percent who disapprove of the move.

“I really don’t like where we are right now,” said one prominent Republican pollster.

To be sure, some of the same polls include evidence suggesting impeachment could become a political risk for Democrats as they head into a heated election year. And the rapid-pace environment in which the impeachment process has already unfolded, combined with varying levels of understanding of the process itself, mean a lot of voters are still in “wait-and-see mode,” according to Roberts.

“There are some people who say, ‘Yes, of course Congress should look into this,’ but there is still a lot of confusion as to what comes next,” said Ryan Winger, a Colorado-based pollster, citing a CBS survey in which 12 percent of voters said they believed Trump “would be removed from office immediately” if the House votes to impeach him. (The next step in the impeachment process would typically include a trial in the Republican-controlled Senate, in accordance with long-standing procedural rules.)

A Monmouth University poll released Tuesday also highlighted areas of confusion involving the facts that led to the impeachment inquiry against Trump. Among Republican respondents, only 40 percent said they believed Trump mentioned the possibility of an investigation into Joe Biden’s son Hunter on his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which led Pelosi to pull the trigger on impeachment proceedings. Trump does not use the word “investigation” in a transcript of the call made public by the White House, but does claim the former vice president “went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution” of his son.

“Towards the end of last week, as more people knew about what was going on and were processing the messages coming from Democrats and the Trump campaign, the number of Republicans who said [Trump’s] behavior was appropriate actually went up,” said Patrick Murray, director of Monmouth University’s Polling Institute. “This told us how powerful partisan filters can be for just interpreting obvious facts.”

2020 elections

For these reasons, GOP officials have been quietly conducting their own surveys to gain an accurate read on how key demographic groups are responding to the impeachment developments and the Republican Party’s response. Two people familiar with the effort said the National Republican Congressional Committee is currently conducting an internal poll this week related to impeachment, in addition to a national survey of registered voters conducted by the Republican National Committee from Sept. 26 to Sept. 29.

An RNC official briefed on the data said it showed that 54 percent of independent voters are against moving forward with impeachment, and that Trump gained 2 points on the ballot against a generic Democratic opponent in 2020. The margin of error for the survey was not immediately clear.

According to the same official, 62 percent of registered voters said Biden should be investigated for potential corruption during his tenure as vice president. Trump allies have repeatedly claimed that the scandal involving his phone call with Zelensky will do serious damage to Biden, a top Democratic presidential contender, simply by raising questions about his son’s overseas business dealings.

Polls that have emerged since initial reports on the issue — indicating a whistleblower came forward with concerns about Trump’s conversation with Zelensky — have underscored mixed feelings among voters toward the former vice president. For example, 42 percent of voters in the Monmouth survey said Biden “probably exerted pressure on Ukrainian officials to avoid investigating” his son during his time in office, but only 26 percent of voters in a Reuters/Ipsos poll said they believe Biden is attempting to conceal a potential scandal ahead of 2020.

“The irony is, the purpose of this call was to get information out there that would cast doubts about Joe Biden, but the fact that this all came out has actually done that for the Trump campaign,“ Murray said, adding that the polling trends he’s seen indicate that independent voters are more inclined to believe the president’s false claims about Biden than to dismiss them.

“It doesn’t seem to be hurting him in the context of the Democratic primary, but it’s something to pay attention to in the future with independent voters,” Murray said.

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2019-10-03 09:00:00Z
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Hong Kong student protester shot by police charged with assault - NBC News

HONG KONG — Criminal charges were filed on Thursday against the 18-year-old Hong Kong student who was shot by a police officer as pro-democracy protests hit a new level of violence this week.

Police told NBC News the student, identified as Tsang Chi-kin, was charged with two counts of assaulting a police officer as tens of thousands of black-clad protesters took to the streets of the semiautonomous territory on Tuesday.

The months-long pro-democracy protests that have gripped Hong Kong began in June in reaction to a now withdrawn extradition bill but have since morphed with calls of greater police accountability and an investigation into allegations of excessive use of force.

The shooting Tuesday happened amid one of the most violent days of the demonstrations. Marked the first time a protester was struck by live ammunition, the shooting has inflamed anger against police.

Oct. 2, 201901:15

Police officials defended the officer on Wednesday, saying his life was in imminent danger and he fired as the teen struck him with a metal rod. Queen Elizabeth hospital confirmed with NBC News that Tsang’s condition was stable after surgery and that he was recovering in the intensive care unit.

A total of 269 people, ranging from ages 12 to 71, were arrested on the day, police said. Cases began to be heard in Shantin court Thursday.

Thousands of people, including Tsang's fellow students at a Hong Kong college, rallied Wednesday to demand police accountability for the shooting.

Veta Chan reported from Hong Kong and Linda Givetash from London.

Linda Givetash

Linda Givetash is a reporter based in London. She previously worked for The Canadian Press in Vancouver and Nation Media in Uganda. 

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2019-10-03 08:48:00Z
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