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The Hong Kong riot police arrest a protester after the rally on August 24, 2019, in Hong Kong. REUTERS / Tyrone Siu

A tense new face-off took place on Saturday, August 24, in Hong Kong between police and radical protesters who erected a barricade in a street. The former British colony, which has been experiencing its worst political crisis since June since its return in 1997 with daily demonstrations, had experienced several days of lull after the violence observed there are ten days.

The situation, on Saturday, August 24, was particularly tense in the popular Kwun Tong district in eastern mainland Hong Kong. After marching through the neighborhood, thousands of protesters, many with gas masks and hard hats, were blocked by dozens of riot police not far from the Ngau Tau Kok police station.

Protesters erected across a street a barricade made of plastic barriers used for traffic and bamboo stems used to make scaffolding in the construction industry. Numerous insults came from the ranks of the demonstrators towards the police, in the center for weeks of protestors' anger, accusing them of violence.

The police charged

Hong Kong riot police eventually charged pro-democracy protesters who had erected a barricade in the Kwun Tong neighborhood in the east of the former British colony. She fired tear gas to disperse them. At least one of the protesters was arrested when security forces intervened against demonstrators who were throwing bottles at them, according to an AFP journalist there.

After weeks of essentially peaceful mobilization, protests escalated in late July and early August in clashes between radicals throwing stones or bricks and the police force making massive use of tear gas and bullets. rubber. There was also a beating during an action at the airport of two mainland Chinese suspected of being spies in Beijing, which generated on the side of the authorities and in the official media Chinese terrorism accusations and more and more threats of intervention from China.

Sunday, August 18, in response, a great peaceful march was organized in the former British colony, gathering 1.7 million people according to its organizers. The mobilization left in June for the rejection of a Beijing-backed local executive bill to allow extradition to China. The movement has since considerably expanded its demands.

( with AFP )

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