Hong Kong Protesters Return to Streets as New Year Begins

Source: NY Times

Weeks of relative calm ended on Wednesday, as people marched in large numbers and the police deployed tear gas and pepper spray.

By Russell Goldman and Elaine Yu

HONG KONG — Hong Kong protesters began the new year the way they’d spent much of the old one: in the streets.

Nearly a month of relative quiet abruptly ended on Wednesday with the sounds of protesters’ chants and police officers’ tear-gas rifles.

A peaceful New Year’s Day march descended within a few hours into violent clashes. Riot officers deployed water cannons and pepper spray. Protesters built barricades out of umbrellas and paving stones, and vandalized at least two branches of a leading bank in the city, HSBC.

The trappings of the previous six months were there — the all-black dress code, the face masks and the odd Molotov cocktail. But the context of the march on Wednesday was decidedly different. When the protests began in June, the tone was one of righteous anger; now, it was more like doubt.



A demonstrator gave a hand signal — meaning “five demands, not one less,” one of the Hong Kong protesters’ main slogans — amid a sea of marchers in the Causeway Bay district on Wednesday.
Photographs by Lam Yik Fei

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/01/world/asia/hong-kong-protest.html