Hong Kong is preparing for new protests on Friday, August 23, and throughout the weekend, including at the international airport, already targeted last week.

After several months of mobilization and tension between protesters and police, the anti-government protest movement shows no sign of abating in the semi-autonomous territory.

The analysis of our correspondent Charles Pellegrin in Hong Kong

Moreover, new tensions are emerging on the diplomatic level between China and certain Western powers. The Canadian Consulate in Hong Kong on Friday suspended the movement of its local staff to mainland China, an announcement that comes after a Chinese employee of the British consulate was arrested in Shenzhen, on the other side. from the border.

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Beijing has accused Britain, former colonial power, and other foreign nations of interfering in its affairs in Hong Kong.

Several rallies were planned on Friday, including a "human chain" that protestors intend to train by holding hands in different parts of the semi-autonomous city. The organizers say they were inspired by what had been done in the Baltic States in 1989, when a crowd estimated at two million people gathered for several hundred kilometers to demand independence.

Saturate access to the airport

Protesters have also said on social networks that they intend to disrupt transport to the international airport during the weekend. The motto is to get there by all means of transport available to saturate access to the airport.

Hong Kong Airport, one of the busiest in the world, was forced to close temporarily early last week and cancel a thousand flights. Sometimes violent incidents broke out between demonstrators and security forces inside the terminals.

In an advertising insert published Friday in Hong Kong's leading newspapers, the airport's management is calling on young people to "love Hong Kong" and expressing opposition to "blocking and interfering in airport operations".

The High Court of Justice extended Friday a measure limiting the access of protesters to certain areas of the airport, saying they want to ban "those who deliberately want to obstruct" its normal activities.

In advance of the protests planned for Friday, the protesters reminded the government of their five demands: definitive withdrawal of the draft law on extradition, opening of an independent investigation into the alleged police violence during the demonstrations, rejection of the term "riot" for qualify the rallies, abandon the charges against the arrested protesters and resume the political reform.

YouTube disables 210 channels

The central government in Beijing, where the term "quasi-terrorism" was used to describe the Hong Kong protests, warned that it could intervene to end the movement.

The fight is also conducted on the Internet. Google announced Thursday that its YouTube platform has disabled 210 channels suspected of conducting a coordinated propaganda operation around the protest movement.

The firm did not specify the origin of the offending channels but said the discovery made by the company was similar to the "recent observations and actions related to China announced by Facebook and Twitter".

The two platforms announced on Monday that they have ended a campaign on their social networks with the support of the Chinese authorities to discredit the Hong Kong protesters.

Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are banned in Mainland China but can be used in Hong Kong.

With Reuters