Protesters take their cues from more than 100 groups on the instant messaging app Telegram, dozens of Instagram sites and online forumsDemonstrators march in Hong Kong. Picture: REUTERS
It is a movement without clearly discernible leaders or structure, making it difficult for the authorities to effectively target — and increasingly hard for the protesters themselves to manage. While it has the support of established pro-democracy groups, the amorphous movement is fueled by activists like Ah Lung — young Hong Kongers who operate independently or in small groups and adapt their tactics on the run.
Scenes once unthinkable in Hong Kong are now commonplace: the city’s international airport being shut down this week after a prolonged occupation by protesters; a Chinese official publicly suggesting that aspects of some of the protests were terrorism; the legislature stormed and ransacked by protesters; police officers repeatedly baton-charging crowds of protesters and unleashing torrents of tear gas in famed shopping districts.
“The movement has a large degree of self-restraint and solidarity, but of course that’s very conditional,” says Samson Yuen, a political scientist at Lingnan University in Hong Kong who has conducted surveys of protesters to understand their motives and support base. “If certain actions spin out of control, if, say, someone dies from it, then that might be a game-changer.
In response to questions from Reuters about the protests, a spokesperson for Lam referred to her promise to address income disparities in the city once the violence subsides. The improvised, bottom-up nature of the protest movement is further evident in the scores of medics, some of them medical staff from local hospitals, who say they have turned up unprompted at protest sites to treat the wounded
In Sham Shui Po on Sunday, Ah Lung joins other masked “front liners” as the protest began. Some use wrenches to loosen bolts on roadside fences, which are then shaken loose, bound with nylon ties, and formed into makeshift barricades against the police. Supporters of Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters gather during a demonstration at Martin Place in Sydney on August 16 2019. Picture: AFP/SAEED KHAN
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