In a drip that does not stop, the campus of the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong, besieged by the Police and the scene of the worst fighting in five months of protests, is emptied. This Wednesday has been handed over a dozen volunteers. In the campus, where they came to hunker down more than a thousand young people, remain only several dozen irreducible. It was a day of relative calm in the excolonia british. With the view already put in the municipal elections, the key Sunday, the protesters pro-democracy have received a boost international: the approval in the Senate of the united States of a draft law that supports your requirements and that has caused the fury of the immediate Beijing.
torture Complaint
The employee of consular of United Kingdom in Hong Kong arrested in August in mainland China for their support to the protesters, Simon Cheng, has reported on Wednesday that during his arrest he was the victim of torture. The british Government has summoned the chinese ambassador in London to express his protest.
“I hung up (handcuffed and chained) on an X-shaped cross me having open arms and legs for hours. I was forced to keep his hands high, so I don’t get to go on the blood to the arms. It was extremely painful,” he complained in his page of Facebook Cheng, among other abuses while he remained in custody in china.
Cheng, according to his version, he was arrested when he was in the area under the sovereignty of china from the station of train of high speed of Hong Kong. Since the inauguration of the terminal last year, critics of Beijing have expressed their fear that is used to increase the control of China over the territory.
With all exits blocked, the search for a means of escape becomes ever more desperate for those who are continued in the interior of the University. In the early hours of the morning, the Police arrested two young men coming out of a sewer after having tried to escape through the sewers. The humanitarian situation of those remaining in the enclosure is deteriorating day by day, when out of the supplies which they have and in a bad hygienic conditions.
in the evening, a dozen young people, among them seven volunteers offered first aid to protesters, emerged escorted by their teachers. Before your eyes, at the distance of a group of parents —one of them, with the face covered and without wanting to speak, confirmed with a gesture that his son was among the delivered—, handed over their data to the Police. After being clocked in, left the venue in a convoy of police trucks. Addition to about 1,100 who have been arrested or have surrendered in four days of siege. A siege that has marked an escalation in the tactics of the protesters, used the campus to launch actions lock on the city, and the Police, which has come to threaten the use of live bullets.
The international concern about the deterioration of the situation in Hong Kong, already on Tuesday was reacting to the Human Rights Commission of the UN in Geneva, has accelerated in Washington the processing of the draft law of Human Rights and Democracy in Hong Kong. The Senate has agreed unanimously to this document after the House of Representatives approved last month a version very similar, which provides for sanctions for the authorities hongkonesas that violate human rights and the periodic review of the trade status favourable than EE. UU. attaches to the excolonia british. Now both chambers must reconcile their versions for the president to Donald Trump, if you agree, put your signature and convert the document into law.
The measure has brought a morale boost to the protesters, who in previous weeks had marched with flags of the united States to urge the Congress to approve the measure. In a tweet, the activist and former student leader Joshua Wong has said that “support Hong Kong should not be a question of left or right. It should be a matter of right or wrong. Emerge a new bipartisan consensus, under the effect of paralyzing and uncompromising generated by Beijing”.
A Beijing which has put the cry in heaven. As proof, in his opinion, his allegations that the crisis in Hong Kong is due to the intervention of foreign forces. After the vote in the u.s. Senate, the Foreign Ministry summoned the minister-counselor of the us Embassy, William Klein, in order to express a “protest solemnly”. “China is going to adopt measures of retaliation, and the united States will have to abide by the consequences,” said Geng Shuang, spokesman for the Ministry in Beijing said in a statement.
“The current situation of Hong Kong does not have any relationship with human rights or democracy”, has argued the spokesperson. “The reality is that (the protesters) have been destroyed and made burn buildings, they have attacked innocent civilians and Police officers have occupied by force fields college, all so deliberate.” “We call on the u.s. to examine with clarity the situation, take steps to prevent the bill from becoming law, and to stop interference in the internal affairs of China and Hong Kong, to avoid lighting a fire that will burn themselves,” added Geng.
With the parties becoming more confrontational, and Beijing insists that the only way out of the political crisis is to put an end to the street violence, without concessions to the protesters, the elections Sunday are seen as a key opportunity to determine the real support among the citizens of the protesters and their demands, or the parties in support of China.