Hong Kong Pepper-Sprays Pro-Democracy Officials at Banned Protest

District councillors (top) protest inside at a mall at Yuen Long in Hong Kong on July 19,
ISAAC LAWRENCE/AFP via Getty Images

Four Hong Kong district councilors were doused with pepper spray and arrested on Sunday at a gathering to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Yuen Long railway station attack, an event on July 21, 2019, known as the “721 Incident” to pro-democracy activists in which a gang of men dressed in white shirts indiscriminately assaulted protesters, reporters, and bystanders with metal poles.

The 721 Incident was a watershed moment in the 2019 protest saga, greatly intensifying the distrust felt by activists toward the police, who were accused of standing by and allowing the mass assault to take place. Critics frequently point out that the police took 40 minutes to respond to reports of a hundred men thrashing innocent people with metal clubs at a rail station located not far from a police depot. The beatings were vicious enough to send dozens of people to the hospital and leave railway cars smeared with blood.

After months of withering criticism, the police eventually blamed the protesters for somehow triggering their own beating. The white-shirted goons are widely suspected to be muscle from the triads — Chinese organized crime syndicates — hired by agents of the Hong Kong government or Chinese Communist Party to intimidate their critics.

A group called Tin Shui Wai Connection had plans to commemorate the Yuen Long attack with a march from the railway terminal to police headquarters but canceled its event after the Hong Kong police objected on coronavirus safety grounds. Hong Kong is experiencing a surge of Chinese coronavirus cases, with a new daily high reported on Sunday. Tighter restrictions were swiftly ordered, including an order for non-essential civil servants to work from home in the coming week.

A crowd of several dozen people decided to proceed with the march anyway, led by a number of district councilors and a member of the Hong Kong legislature, Eddi Chu Hoi-dick.

According to the South China Morning Post, the march assembled at the Yuen Long MTR station at 3 p.m. as planned, but when they reached their intended destination — a school playground across from police headquarters — they found themselves “outnumbered by about 100 riot police officers, who arrested four people for unlawful assembly and fined several for breaking social-distancing regulations.”

“Police also used pepper spray to disperse the protesters, who heckled the officers during identity card checks. Some reporters at the scene were also hit by pepper spray,” the SCMP wrote.

The protest moved into the nearby Yoho Shopping Mall, where police once again warned the demonstrators they could be fined for violating social distancing rules. At least eight citations were written for people who refused to leave the mall when ordered.

The demonstrators began chanting the slogan of the 2019 protest movement, “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times,” at which point the police waved a purple flag warning that they could now be held in violation of the draconian security law Beijing imposed on Hong Kong last month. The “Liberate Hong Kong” slogan is treated as a punishable act of sedition under the law.

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