Hong Kong Airport Demonstrators Impede Police Vans, Clash With Officers in Riot Gear

Riot police were sent into Hong Kong International Airport on August 13 to remove protesters whose mass sit-in had caused the suspension of all departing flights since August 12.

This footage shows clashes between riot police and protesters, barricaded airport entrances, and demonstrators throwing projectiles and pushing trolleys against police vans to impede their movement.

Earlier in the night, around 11 pm, a scuffle occurred in the airport after protesters surrounded a man they believed to be an undercover officer. The man was escorted from the airport in an ambulance, Hong Kong Free Press reported.

A man whose wrists were zip-tied together by protesters in the airport was identified as Fu Guohao, a reporter for Mainland China state media outlet Global Times, by the Global Times’s editor-in-chief, Hu Xijin.

The protesters had staged continuous sit-ins at the airport over the weekend to put pressure on the government to accede to “five demands,” including the complete formal withdrawal of a proposed extradition bill that ignited the initial protests in March, local media reported. Credit: Aaron McNicholas via Storyful