Hong Kong Hospitals Find Themselves on Protest Frontlines

A patient is wheeled past as healthcare staff hold posters and participate in a human chain to protest against what they say is police brutality during the anti-extradition bill protests, at Queen Mary Hospital, in Hong Kong, China, on Sept. 2, 2019. Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters

HONG KONG—Hong Kong’s public hospitals, long known for professionalism, have become a new front in the pro-democracy protests that have engulfed the city for more than five months.

An incident in which riot police armed with shields and batons interrogated a pregnant woman at her bedside in a hospital labor ward has become a rallying cry for medical professionals who fear that patient confidentiality and high standards of treatment are under threat.