Hong Kong Police fire on protests, in first ever

Three policemen pulled guns and one of them fired a shot into the air, as he was surrounded by protesters armed with sticks. Yesterday's clashes left dozens injured among both policemen and demonstrators; 36 arrests, including a 12-year-old boy. The relatives of the policemen demand an independent investigation into the excessive use of force by the police.

Hong Kong (AsiaNews) - For the first time, after 12 weeks of protests, yesterday a policeman fired his gun during a clash with demonstrators in Tsuen Wan. Three policemen, surrounded and beaten by a group armed with sticks, extracted their guns and one of them fired a shot into the air. No one was injured by the gunshot, but the clashes led to the wounding of 15 policemen and 22 protesters, one of them seriously, and the arrest of 36 people, including a 12-year-old boy.

This morning, Superintendent Yolanda Yu Hoi-kwan condemned the "extreme violence" of the "rioters" in the city and called the use of guns "necessary and reasonable".

It all started late yesterday morning. The police had approved an anti-extradition march from the Kwai Chung sports field to Tsuen Wan park in the north of the territory. Even in the pouring rain, thousands of people gathered. But as soon as the march started, some demonstrators left the assigned route and set up barricades, clashing with the police, throwing bricks and Molotov cocktails. Later they vandalized some shops and then clashed again with the police, until the gunshot was fired.

Yesterday, for the first time, water cannons placed on small trucks imported from France, capable of launching 1200 liters of water per minute, from a distance of 50 meters, were also used.

Yesterday's violence as well as that of the previous evening appears a return to the bitter clashes that characterized some fringes of the anti-extradition movement in these 12 weeks. Throughout last week the demonstrations had been totally peaceful.

Yesterday there was another significant demonstration: several hundred people, who call themselves "relatives of police officers", gathered in Edinburgh Place in Central, asking the government for an independent inquiry into the excessive use of force by the police . They ask the government to resolve the crisis by political means and not to rely solely on the work of the police.

The independent investigation is one of the urgent demands of the anti-extradition demonstrators, which the government does not want to give in to.

The police association and its union warned their families against joining the demonstration because, they say, there are anti-government members among them.