• Tweeter

  • republish

Yang Guang, spokesman for the Hong Kong and Macao Business Liaison Office at a press conference on August 12, 2019 in Beijing, where he associates protesters' acts of "terrorism" AFP Photos / STR

Nearly 5,000 protesters occupied the airport in the special administrative region on Monday, police said. In Beijing, communist leaders have for the first time described acts of violence as " terrorism ".

With our correspondent in Beijing, Stéphane Lagarde

This is another level of condemnation, and a vocabulary that leaves little doubt as to the firmness expected by the Chinese authorities vis-à-vis the protesters.

" What the protesters did [August 11] was crazy and frenetic, " some actions may be a sign of " the emergence of terrorism, " said Yang Guang, the spokesman of Hong's business liaison office. Kong and Macao in front of the Chinese media, this Monday afternoon.

Foreign journalists were not invited, only a handful of Hong Kong confreres were able to attend the press conference.

For Yang Guang, the violence must stop immediately in Hong Kong: " We must fight this type of crime relentlessly, without any leniency, and in accordance with the law. We support the Hong Kong police and hope that the perpetrators of these acts will be brought to justice quickly. The Special Administrative Region is today in a critical situation. Those who care about his fate must condemn radical protesters. It is urgent to return to stability . "

Molotov cocktails looped on Chinese television

For this third conference of the Liaison Office in two months of movement, questions were not allowed.

Since Sunday evening, the state media broadcast in a loop the image of an agent blazing after the throwing of a Molotov cocktail.

Twelve Hong Kong policemen have their retinas damaged because of the lasers pointed by the protesters, one suffered a second-degree injury. The images of the victims, side demonstrators, were however strictly censored in the press of the continent.