HONG KONG, Dec 17: Hong Kong police on Saturday used tear gas, fire hoses and pepper spray to hold back hundreds of anti-globalization demonstrators, in the worst violence seen in the city for decades.
Demonstrators from South Korea and other parts of Asia and Westerners, determined to disrupt the World Trade Organization meeting as it draws near its end, used metal railings as battering rams to try to smash through police lines.
Some broke through and attacked officers with bamboo sticks and bars. In chaotic scenes, police grappled with protesters and dragged some away.
An eyewitness said police had fired or thrown dozens of tear gas canisters on Saturday evening.
“The protesters have been pushed back with tear smoke by the Hong Kong police. You’re all perfectly okay,” Peter Hunt, a police officer, told delegates inside the WTO venue, a harbour front convention centre which had locked its doors.
Police chief Lee Ming-kwai said 41 people including five police had been injured. Two of the injured were in hospital.
Lee told reporters 900 people had been temporarily detained but there were no immediate figures for any arrests. “At this moment in time, we have rounded up about 900 in the Wan Chai area,” Lee said.
He said police had control of most of the Wan Chai waterfront district Saturday evening and he did not expect similar violent protests on the conference’s last day Sunday.
Lee said authorities were considering whether to ban a protest planned for Sunday in light of the violence.
The police chief said trouble began when about 1,000 protesters suddenly charged a cordon keeping them away from the convention centre.
“A major confrontation ensued,” Lee added, with protesters attacking police with iron poles and other hard objects and pushing down barriers. They also tried in vain to overturn a police van.
Demonstrations earlier in the week by South Korean farmers and other anti-globalisation activists had been mild compared to mayhem at WTO meetings in Seattle in 1999 and Cancun in 2003.
But the Koreans had vowed to make Saturday the day they would “escalate” their action ahead of the end of the six-day meeting on Sunday.
On Saturday afternoon demonstrators suddenly split into at least two groups and tried to break through police lines, temporarily succeeding in some places.
Militant French farmer Jose Bove, best known for demolishing a half-built McDonald’s in the southern town of Millau in 1999, was among protesters.
“The WTO fortress is surrounded by farmers,” he said.
“It’s a success for the farmers’ movement, which was able to organize the encirclement and get close to the building” where the WTO is meeting.”
“The WTO is already dead. The people’s war against the WTO is already won,” he said.—AFP
