Hong Kong protests 2019: news and updates

China took several aggressive actions this weekend after US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, including firing ballistic missiles in Taiwan’s vicinity and sanctioning Pelosi. While the incident may not lead to all-out war, it’s a further step in the dissolution of the relationship between the US and China — and it gives China’s military the training it needs to execute future attacks.

Pelosi is the highest-ranking US official to visit Taiwan since former Speaker Newt Gingrich went in 1997. In the 25 years since, China has grown both its economy and military exponentially. Along with that has come the nation’s desire — and increased capability — to lay claim to Taiwan. Taiwan, which governs itself independently of Beijing under current President Tsai Ing-wen, has increasingly chafed at Beijing’s tactics to “reunify” Taiwan with mainland China.

In the mid-1970s, a bright young girl became head prefect of a Catholic girls’ school near the lush foothills of Hong Kong. She approached a teacher for advice on how to manage her naughtier classmates.

“You don’t control; you inspire,” the teacher replied.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has won reelection in this Saturday’s elections.

She received 57 percent of the vote, to her chief rival’s 38 percent, in a victory that had a lot to do with China, and the continuing upheaval in Hong Kong.

Protesters filled Hong Kong International Airport in August. Many wore black, the unofficial uniform of these demonstrations. They carried signs and decorated the walls and floors with messages explaining why they were rallying, disrupting the transit hub. Some taped bandages to their eyes, dripping with red ink to represent the injury to a female volunteer medic after she was hit with a bean bag round, allegedly fired by police during a protest earlier that month.

The airport protests encapsulated months of turmoil in Hong Kong, which has only intensified in the weeks since. Demonstrations and sit-ins have now happened for about 26 weeks straight, at times turning tense and violent when police arrive spraying tear gas and rubber bullets. November was especially brutal: Police shot a protester, and a university campus occupied by demonstrators came under siege from police.

Pro-democracy candidates achieved a staggering victory in Hong Kong’s local elections on Sunday — a peaceful but pointed rebuke of pro-Beijing leadership after six months of sustained protests in the territory.

Sunday’s elections were a landslide for pro-democracy candidates, who won majorities in 17 out of 18 of Hong Kong’s district councils; previously they had majorities in none. Pro-Beijing candidates held 300 seats; they now hold just 58. Indeed, out of 452 seats up for grabs, pro-democracy candidates won about 80 percent, flipping more than half.

The campus of a Hong Kong university transformed into an apocalyptic scene on Monday as riot police armed with tear gas and rubber bullets surrounded pro-democracy protesters.

The standoff between authorities and protesters at Hong Kong Polytechnic University has turned into one of the fiercest, most violent conflicts in the nearly six months of protests in the autonomous territory.

A police officer shot a Hong Kong protester Monday morning, setting off a wave of violent confrontations in the territory where pro-democracy demonstrations have raged for nearly six months.

Protesters on Monday had planned for a city-wide strike — intended to bring the city to a standstill — in response to the death of a protester, who fell from a parking garage last week and died. Demonstrators have blamed the police for the 22-year-old’s death, as officers were firing tear gas in the area, though the circumstances are still a bit murky.

As American companies try to figure out how to keep business afloat without angering the Chinese government amid the ongoing Hong Kong protests, Reset focused its latest episode on HK Map Live — an app that’s being used by pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. It was designed to help protesters and residents to locate police and demonstrations.

Apple rejected it when it was initially submitted to the App Store, then later changed its mind and approved it. A few days after it became available, Apple turned around and banned it entirely. The decision worried US lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, who wrote CEO Tim Cook a letter expressing their concern.

The Hong Kong government has invoked a colonial-era law to ban face masks in an attempt to crack down on the months-long protest movement that’s gotten increasingly tense in recent weeks.

Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s embattled chief executive, announced the ban Friday. “The decision to enact an anti-mask law is not easy one, but it is a necessary decision considering the situation today,” Lam said at a press conference.

President Donald Trump just made his most forceful comments yet in defense of Hong Kong, telling China that it must respect the city’s democracy and abide by the decades-old agreement giving it semi-autonomy.

Trump made the remarks during his address at the United Nations on Tuesday. Most of the speech was spent rehashing many of his talking points about the virtues of nationalism and the importance of national sovereignty. But the Hong Kong section was a particular surprise since he has for months failed to offer a full-throated defense of the city’s pro-democracy protesters.

In an online video, protesters in riot gear sing and play instruments. They have violins tucked under chins covered with masks, drumsticks swinging in black-gloved hands. And together, in Cantonese, they belt out the soundtrack to the Hong Kong resistance: a new, if unofficial, national anthem.

“Glory to Hong Kong” (Or “Glory be to thee, Hong Kong”) has become the rallying cry of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, one that’s being sung in unison by crowds in malls and even at a soccer game this week. It’s the latest act of opposition by demonstrators, who for months have been resisting creeping Chinese authority in the autonomous territory, and it may be one of the greatest signs yet of just how cohesive the resistance really is.

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam said Wednesday the government would formally withdraw the controversial extradition bill that sparked months of protests.

Withdrawing the bill sits atop the list of protesters’ demands. But most greeted the news with the sentiment: “too little, too late.”

In 2014, protesters took to the streets to challenge Beijing’s plans to limit democracy in Hong Kong. Now, five years later, activists who’d planned to mark the anniversary with another demonstration are being blocked and arrested by Hong Kong authorities.

It’s a sign of the escalating tensions in Hong Kong between protesters and the government over months-long demonstrations that began over a controversial extradition bill and have since blossomed into a larger fight for democracy and rule of law in the autonomous territory.

It may have been China’s biggest unforced error in Hong Kong.

Earlier this year, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who is close to the government in Beijing, tried to force through a draft bill that would have permitted China to extradite alleged criminals in Hong Kong for trial in mainland China.

The protesters in Hong Kong tend to live in the present: this one demonstration, this one act of resistance, this one small victory, this one setback. If they pause, if they let themselves be broken, they might lose everything.

The momentum also helps avoid the question of what comes after. The future could be scary or hopeful or the same as before. They don’t know, so they just have to try and try and try, for something.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google are dealing with the fallout of disinformation spread from another state actor on their platforms: China.

On Monday, both Facebook and Twitter announced plans to take action on coordinated attempts by the Chinese government or those associated with it to manipulate information on social media about massive protests underway in Hong Kong. Then on Thursday, Google said it had found something similar on YouTube, which it owns.

Despite heavy rain, threats from Beijing, and weeks of clashes with the police, nearly 2 million protesters marched through the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday for the 11th weekend in a row.

The huge turnout for the demonstrations — which began as an objection to a controversial extradition bill and have since evolved into a broader call for greater political freedoms — suggests that the threat of a military crackdown by the state has not caused the protest movement to lose momentum.

Pro-democracy protesters shut down the airport in Hong Kong for the second day in a row, occupying the terminals and forcing the suspension of outgoing flights.

This is the fifth day of the airport demonstration, which began as a sit-in where protesters greeted travelers on arriving flights with leaflets and chants in support of Hong Kong. The protests escalated on Monday after demonstrators objected to police tactics — including firing tear gas and rubber bullets — during other protests in Hong Kong over the weekend. Monday’s protests forced the cancellation of more than 100 flights as people flooded into and took over the airport.

Massive antigovernment protests were staged across Hong Kong for the tenth straight week Sunday as citizens demanded their leaders listen to their concerns about mainland China’s influence in Hong Kong politics.

For weeks, tens of thousands — and once, nearly 2 million — Hongkongers have taken to the streets, first to force their government to end discussion of a controversial extradition bill, and later, once city leaders shelved that bill, to demand the city’s chief executive resign and apologize for what protesters say has been an overly violent police response to mostly peaceful demonstrations.

After months of tense protests in Hong Kong, demonstrations took a lighter turn on Wednesday — in the form of a late-night laser show.

Hundreds of demonstrators armed with shining blue, green, and purple laser pointers gathered near the Hong Kong Space Museum after the sun went down to protest the arrest of a student leader, Keith Fong. Police apprehended Fong Tuesday after he bought 10 laser pointers, which Police Chief Inspector Chow Hok-yin called “offensive weapons.”

A mob of people in white shirts attacked protesters in a train station in Yuen Long, Hong Kong, on Sunday night, intensifying the standoff between Hong Kong’s government and police force and pro-democracy protesters.

About 45 people were injured — including at least one critically — when a group of mostly masked men in white T-shirts ambushed black-clad protesters and bystanders in the train station, hitting them with bamboo sticks, wooden rods, and other objects.

Ongoing protests continued in Hong Kong on Sunday in a demonstration that saw tens of thousands of protestors defy police orders and march to government buildings. What began as a peaceful protest ultimately turned violent Sunday night as protesters and police clashed and a white-clad masked crowd attacked protesters.

The day’s protest — the seventh in a series of demonstrations that have taken place in Hong Kong every weekend since early June — was staged to make citizens’ displeasure with their city’s Beijing-backed chief executive, Carrie Lam, known and to call for an investigation into police action at protests.

Twenty-two years ago, on July 1, 1997, the United Kingdom handed Hong Kong back to China on the promise that China would allow the city-state to largely govern itself for another 50 years.

But many in Hong Kong see a controversial new extradition law as a sign that Beijing is trying to cut that timeline short, and they’re fighting back.

Protesters in Hong Kong forced their way into the legislature, taking over the building on the 22nd anniversary of the city-state’s handover from Britain to China.

Demonstrators wearing hard hats tore apart the outside of the Legislative Council, ripping down metal and shattering glass to get inside the building. A handful of protesters used a shopping cart as battering ram and others used metal poles and umbrellas to pry open the main entrance. At about 9 pm local time, they broke through and flooded inside.

Hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers have taken to the streets to protest a controversial extradition bill that could send Hong Kong residents to mainland China to be tried in court. Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, said the bill is intended to prevent Hong Kong from becoming a safe haven for fugitives. But opponents fear that the bill would expose Hong Kong to China’s flawed judicial system and lead to further erasure of the city’s judicial independence.

Initially, Lam was determined to move forward with the bill. But after a series of massive protests, she announced she would “indefinitely suspend” it. Protesters are not accepting the suspension, however, and have started demanding its withdrawal — and calling for Lam’s resignation.