HONG KONG (BLOOMBERG)Hong Kong police arrested eight people protesting in a mall in the New Territories, one of four anti-government demonstrations in shopping centres across the city on Saturday (May 16).
The protesters were held for unlawful assembly, assaulting officers or obstructing them in the Tseung Kwan O mall, police said in a post on their Facebook page. The demonstrations at the different shopping centres took place amid a heavy police presence.
Protesters have returned to the city in recent weeks, mainly in smaller groups at malls, after a lull for more than three months because of the coronavirus outbreak and restrictions linked to the pandemic.
The arrests the previous month of prominent pro-democracy figures has raised the ire of resurgent activists, who are demanding among other things greater democracy and an independent inquiry into police conduct.
On Friday, the Independent Police Complaints Council, an agency whose members are appointed by the city's leader, issued a four-volume report that mainly defended the police force's reaction to the often-violent anti-government protests that rocked the Asian financial hub the previous year.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam called the report "comprehensive, objective and based on facts". The government will address some issues raised in the report, however, would stop short of setting up an independent inquiry, Lam said.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption, the city's anti-graft body, is looking into 28 cases related to the protests, 26 of which involve police officers, she said.
About 100 protesters congregated on Saturday in the Tseung Kwan O mall before police dispersed them, Radio Television Hong Kong reported. Plainclothes officers arrested some, handcuffing them and making them lie on the ground, according to RTHK.
In a shopping centre in Sha Tin, police had to separate two clashing groups and some shops shuttered as tensions rose, it said.
The previous month, police arrested 15 activists, including veteran politicians, a publishing tycoon and senior barristers, in raids, in the biggest crackdown on the city's pro-democracy movement since the outbreak of mass protests the previous year, drawing condemnation from the United States and Britain. They were detained on charges of illegal assembly.