In Hong Kong, More Protests Begin After Wave of Arrests - The New York Times

HONG KONG — Thousands of pro-democracy protesters were demonstrating in Hong Kong on Saturday for a 13th straight weekend, over police objections and a day after several high-profile activists and pro-democracy lawmakers were arrested.

Tensions had been running high, partly because Saturday was the fifth anniversary of the day that Beijing announced a plan for limited democracy in the territory. That decision angered many in Hong Kong and triggered months of large-scale protests in 2014.

Those protests, known as the Umbrella Movement, now seem almost sedate compared with the demonstrations that have engulfed the semiautonomous city this summer, many of which have led to street clashes and clouds of tear gas.

Earlier this week, the police declined to issue a permit for a planned mass gathering on Saturday that was meant to mark the anniversary. It was meant to be another of the large, overwhelmingly peaceful marches that have punctuated the summer — organized by a long-established advocacy group, usually with police permission, and attended by hundreds of thousands of people, including children.

Two weeks ago, the police banned a march organized by the same group, the Civil Human Rights Front, but hundreds of thousands of people defied them and took to the streets. The group said at the time that the march “continues the will” of those who had turned out for a particularly large march in June.

[Beijing pledged “one country, two systems” when it took back Hong Kong. Many fear it is eroding freedoms.]

But on Friday, after the police banned the Saturday march out of what they described as a concern for public safety, the Civil Human Rights Front said it was canceling it, essentially for the same reason.

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Many protesters had already said on social media that they planned to march with or without police permission. And by midday on Saturday, protesters of all ages had filled the soccer and basketball courts of a playground in Wan Chai, a neighborhood just a couple of subway stops east of the aborted march’s planned starting point.

“You are in breach of the law,” read a black-and-yellow sign that a police officer held aloft at the playground. “You may be prosecuted.”

Many of the protesters eventually began marching from the playground toward the home of Carrie Lam, the territory’s deeply unpopular chief executive.

By 2 p.m., throngs of black-clad marchers had snarled traffic on some major roads. Some police officers in riot gear watched from the sidelines, their helmets off. Other protesters were gathering in Causeway Bay, a popular shopping district further east on Hong Kong Island.

Saturday’s unauthorized civil disobedience was unfolding against the backdrop of what appeared to be a coordinated police crackdown on some of the city’s highest-profile democracy advocates.

On Friday, the police arrested at least three prominent activists, including Joshua Wong, a student leader of the Umbrella Movement, and Agnes Chow. The police said the two had been arrested on unauthorized assembly charges related to a June 21 protest in which thousands of people surrounded the police headquarters.

Three lawmakers from Hong Kong’s pro-democracy legislative minority — Cheng Chung-tai, Au Nok-hin and Jeremy Tam — were also arrested on Friday, on charges related to their participation in the protests this summer. As of midday Saturday, their Facebook pages suggested that they were still being held.

Mr. Wong, meanwhile, was back on the streets.

“The price I paid is just a small piece of cake” compared to what other protesters have been through, he told reporters.

Hong Kong’s political crisis, the worst since Britain handed the colony back to China in 1997, was set off by widespread anger over a bill that would allow criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China for trial. The measure, which critics said could be used to target activists, was suspended, but not withdrawn as protesters have demanded.

[How the protests in Hong Kong have evolved, with changing tactics, goals and more violence.]

Vincent Ho, 40, arrived at the Wan Chai playground on Saturday with his wife and their 10-year-old son. He said he had wondered whether it was safe to bring his son, but that they planned to leave before anything dangerous happened.

Mr. Ho, who works at a bank, said measures like the extradition bill would make him question whether he was comfortable having his son grow up in the city.

“Our freedom is being taken away,” he said. “Our system is being destroyed, and without that, it’s not Hong Kong anymore.”

The planned route for the now-canceled Saturday march went from Hong Kong’s central business district to the Chinese government’s local liaison office, as a means of focusing public attention on the five-year anniversary of Beijing’s decision to limit elections.

On Saturday afternoon, sidewalks outside the liaison office were blocked by water-filled plastic barriers more than six feet high. The city’s subway operator, the MTR Corporation, had also closed a nearby train station until further notice — “as a prudent measure,” it said, ahead of “public activities likely to be taking place.”

The liaison office was vandalized by a hard-core group of protesters last month, prompting China to denounce them — and to place a plastic shield around a national crest outside the building, which protesters had spattered with ink.

Street violence has come in fits and starts during this summer’s protests, and life in Hong Kong has otherwise proceeded relatively normally. But there is growing fear among a wide cross-section of Hong Kong society that the violence, which has included a mob attack on protesters, could eventually lead to deaths.

Some protesters have in recent weeks thrown bricks, firebombs and other objects at the police, who as of mid-August had fired more than 1,800 rounds of tear gas, plus rubber bullets and beanbag rounds, to disperse crowds.

Last weekend, the police used water cannon trucks for the first time since the protests began in June, and a few officers drew pistols on protesters, some of whom were charging at them with sticks. One officer fired a warning shot into the air after one of his colleagues fell to the ground.

Mrs. Lam, the territory’s chief executive, said on Tuesday that the government was looking into “all laws in Hong Kong — if they can provide a legal means to stop violence and chaos.” Mrs. Lam was answering a question about whether she was considering use of Hong Kong’s sweeping Emergency Regulations Ordinance, a colonial-era law that grants Hong Kong’s leader broad powers to “make any regulations whatsoever which he may consider desirable in the public interest.”

On Thursday, the Chinese military sent fresh troops to its Hong Kong garrison. Although the military called it a routine rotation, the move fueled speculation that Beijing might be quietly expanding its presence in the territory.

Claudia Mo, a pro-democracy lawmaker in Hong Kong’s legislature, said on Friday that she feared the government was setting a trap for the protesters.

“The government is anticipating, are they not, inciting chaos and probably mayhem tomorrow,” she told reporters. “As a result that would give them the excuse to invoke the so-called Emergency Whatnot Law in Hong Kong. Is that what Carrie Lam is planning?”

People’s Daily, the main newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, warned Saturday that Beijing would not stand on the sidelines if the Hong Kong government was overwhelmed by “turmoil.” It likened the protesters to arrogant ants, warning that they stood no chance of prevailing over the central leadership in Beijing.

“We also admonish all forces opposing China and throwing Hong Kong into chaos to by no means misjudge the situation and mistake restraint for weakness,” the newspaper said.

The warning echoed an earlier one from Zhang Xiaoming, a top Chinese official overseeing Hong Kong affairs, and seemed designed to dispel any notion that Beijing was open to concessions.

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