Unidentified protesters who stormed Hong Kong’s Legislative Council building and broke a glass door have been criticized by legislators, the government, and student groups.
At about 1:00 a.m. Hong Kong time (12:00 a.m. Eastern time) on Wednesday, Nov. 18, a small group of masked protesters used a metal barricade and other implements to repeatedly ram and shatter a glass door of the LegCo building in Admiralty.
The masked protesters were responding to a misleading post on HKGolden, a popular Hong Kong online forum, that asked people to break into LegCo to protest the voting of Article 23 for the Internet in a legislative session later that day. The bill, which would curb online freedom, will only be tabled next year.
Shortly after the incident, police showed up in riot gear, and kept the radical protesters away from the building with batons and pepper spray. The police, who were criticized for their brutality in clearing protesters from Causeway Bay and Mong Kok in the early weeks of the demonstrations, were relatively restrained in the numerous scuffles that broke out.
MORE: Radical Protesters Smash Glass Door of Legislature
Police “strongly condemned the violent radicals for storming and damaging the LegCo Complex” in a statement, and revealed that a total of six people have been arrested for this incident, and that further arrests may be made.
