News Digest

Hong Kong police use chainsaws to remove protesters’ barricades

Hong Kong police have cleared more barricades from pro-democracy protest zones, signalling authorities’ growing impatience with the student-led activists. Appearing to use a strategy of gradually chipping away at the three main protest zones, hundreds of police used electric saws and bolt cutters to take down barriers that the protesters had erected overnight in the Admiralty area after a few dozen masked men stormed some of the barricades the day before. A few dozen protesters who sat guarding one entrance to the main occupied zone after the police came were exhausted but defiant.

I’m feeling a bit lost. There is no dialogue with the government, and the truth is we are affecting people’s lives. But we can’t bear to leave without getting any results.

Mark Li, a 21-year-old college student and protester

By gradually reducing the protest areas from the edges and acting during the quiet morning hours, the police appear to want to avoid the sort of confrontations - using tear gas and pepper spray - that backfired two weeks ago, when the street protests started. The protesters want the government to drop plans for a pro-Beijing committee to screen candidates in the territory’s first direct elections, promised for 2017. They also demand that Hong Kong’s deeply unpopular Beijing-backed leader, Leung Chun-ying, resign. State media in mainland China has downplayed the crisis.