Protests calling on US President Donald Trump to intervene in the ongoing Hong Kong political standoff escalated rapidly Sunday, with marchers setting fire to a barricade outside a subway station entrance in the city’s business district.
Earlier in the day, tens of thousands of protesters waving US flags marched on Hong Kong’s US Consulate to call for help from the Trump administration in ending a three-month confrontation with the government.
The march began in the Chater Garden public park in Central before heading to the consulate as part of the 14th straight weekend of public demonstrations in the Asian financial hub.
In a letter which protesters planned to presented to consulate officials, the group calls for the passing of the proposed “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act 2019” by the US Congress.
One banner carried at the march read “President Trump, please liberate Hong Kong” in English. Some marchers sang the US national anthem as they moved towards the consulate.
“We share the same US values of liberty and democracy,” 30-year-old banker David Wong said. “USA is a country of democracy. Donald Trump is elected by his people. We want this.”
The protests began peacefully but rapidly deteriorated into violence and vandalism over the afternoon, after police appeared to arrest a number of people in the busy Central subway station.
Protesters erected a barricade at one of the subway exits before being setting it on fire. Other exits had their glass windows smashed or defaced with graffiti.
The Sunday clashes indicate that an attempt by the Hong Kong government to defuse the crisis by withdrawing a controversial China extradition bill on Wednesday, one of the official five demands of the protest movement, had failed.
Leading activists said the move was too little too late and already on Sunday groups of protesters have been heard chanting, “Five demands, not one less.”
The march is unlikely to end allegations by the Chinese government and state-run media that the United States has been interfering in the Hong Kong protests.
Speaking last week, Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office spokesman Yang Guang accused US politicians of “shooting their mouths off” on the demonstrations.
‘Most favored nation’ status
US President Donald Trump has shown little inclination to get involved in the Hong Kong protests since they began in June.
In August he said he hoped the demonstrations would eventually work out “for everybody, including China” and that no one gets hurt.
But some US politicians have been pushing for greater US action to help the protesters, with some even pushing for an official re-evaluation of Hong Kong’s “most-favored-nation” trade status with the United States.
That special status gives countries certain trade advantages, including lower tariffs on imported goods, according to the US government.
A bipartisan group of US senators introduced the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act” in June, which requires an annual check that Hong Kong is autonomous enough “to justify special treatment.”
It’s this act which some protesters are calling on the US Congress to pass to put additional pressure on the Hong Kong government and Beijing to accede to their demands.