13th August, 2019
Flights resumed Tuesday at Hong Kong airport a day after a massive pro-democracy rally there forced the shutdown of the busy international transport hub.
Early Tuesday, passengers with luggage were being checked in at the departures hall and information boards showed several flights were already boarding or about to depart.
The abrupt shutdown of one of the world’s busiest hubs came after thousands of black-clad demonstrators flooded the airport for a peaceful rally.
It was a dramatic escalation of a 10-week crisis that has been the biggest challenge to Chinese rule of Hong Kong since the 1997 British handover.
The protests have infuriated Beijing, which described some of the violent demonstrations as “terrorism”.
Washington overnight urged all sides to refrain from violence, as the crisis sparked by a bill to allow extradition to mainland China continues with no apparent end in sight.
On Tuesday morning, only a handful of protesters remained in the airport. But fears of a police operation to clear the facility overnight proved unfounded, with demonstrators simply leaving by themselves.
Many of the posters and artwork they had hung throughout the facility during the hours-long rally had been taken down, but graffiti — some reading “an eye for an eye” — could still be seen in several places.
The protesters adopted the slogan after a woman suffered a serious facial injury that reportedly caused her to lose the vision in one eye at a demonstration that turned violent on Sunday night.
The demonstrators accuse police of causing the injury by firing a bean-bag round, and cite the case as evidence of what they say has been an excessive and disproportionate response by police to their protests.
The activists have called on their supporters to return to the airport later on Tuesday, though it was unclear whether authorities would allow that to happen.
The protests that began in opposition to a bill allowing extradition to the mainland has morphed into a broader bid to reverse a slide of freedoms in the southern Chinese city.
But the city’s Beijing-backed leader has ruled out meeting the protesters’ demands, which include the right to choose their next leader and an investigation into alleged police brutality.
The demonstrations have become increasingly violent, with police using tear gas and rubber bullets to push back protesters who have sometimes hurled bricks and bottles.