Hong Kong police lay siege to central university campus amid violent protests

Hundreds of protesters with bricks and makeshift barricades are holding off riot police on roads surrounding the campus in the city's Hung Hom district, just across Victoria Harbor from Hong Kong Island. The authorities have responded with tear gas and threats of rubber bullets in skirmishes that continued into Sunday afternoon.

Hong Kong's Polytechnic University was just one of a number of university campuses being used in the past week as a rallying point for Hong Kong's protest movement.

But unlike other campuses such as the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Polytechnic University sits in the center of the city, close to a number of major roads including a cross harbor tunnel.

In the past week, protesters have blocked these roads, severely disrupting the city's public transport system.

The protests in Hong Kong have now been raging for almost six months after they began in June over a controversial China extradition bill, which sparked huge marches across the city.

When the government suspended but didn't withdraw the bill, the movement's focus quickly expanded to focus on complaints of police brutality and wider calls for democracy.

The protests took a turn in early November after the protest-related death of a 22-year-old student, the first since the demonstrations began. Protesters began to fortify university campuses across the city, holding off police with weapons ranging from bows and arrows and petrol bombs.

On Saturday night police attempted to clear the roads around Polytechnic University but were forced to back down after protesters started fires on the street and threw petrol bombs.

"They showed total disregard for the safety of everyone at scene," police said in a statement Sunday, confirming they tried to disperse the group using tear gas.

On Sunday the government announced that all schools would be shut again on Monday as protests were expected to continue across the city.

Protests escalate

With the both the government and the protesters refusing to back down, there is no immediate end in sight to the Hong Kong demonstrations.

Showing his dissatisfaction with the situation, Chinese President Xi Jinping made rare public comments on the demonstrations Thursday.

He said that "radical" protesters had trampled the city's rule of law and that "stopping the violence and restoring order" was Hong Kong's most "urgent task."

It came just hours before a 70-year-old man, who was struck by a brick during clashes between protesters and their opponents, died of his injuries. Police blamed protesters for throwing the item which killed him.

For the first time since the start of the demonstrations in June, China's People's Liberation Army hit the streets of Hong Kong on Saturday but only to clear up barricades and debris.

Even that incursion was enough to spur pro-democracy lawmakers in Hong Kong to push for an explanation from the city's government.

Chinese soldiers' efforts to clear road blocks outside their barracks in Kowloon Tong was "purely a voluntary community activity initiated by themselves," the Hong Kong SAR government said in a statement to CNN.

Let's block ads! (Why?)