A pre-approved rally in solidarity with the mainland’s hundreds of thousands of detained Uyghurs on Sunday descended into chaos after police stormed the gathering when a handful of participants took down a Chinese flag — with one officer brandishing a gun at the crowd before others intervened.
Footage from the scene shows police hosing down the crowd with pepper spray and putting protesters in chokeholds in an apparent attempt to make arrests, while other protesters clash with officers and throw projectiles in an apparent attempt to stop them.
The outbreak of violence at the rally, which had started off peacefully, was in response to protesters tearing the Chinese national flag from a pole near City Hall, Bloomberg reports. Under Hong Kong law, trampling, burning, or otherwise “defiling” the Chinese flag can be punished by up to three years in prison.
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In videos from the rally, one officer can be seen aiming his service revolver at the crowd before two white-shirted superintendents appear to tell him to step aside, and place themselves between the officer and the crowd.
Though still a relatively rare occurrence compared to police’s use of less-lethal ammunition, instances of officers drawing their pistols have become more common. A traffic officer shooting an unarmed protester in Sai Wan Ho last month, for instance, precipitated some of the most intense protests the city has seen in its long-running pro-democracy protest movement.
RTHK reports that prior to the police intervention, protesters had gathered at Edinburgh Place to air concerns that Hongkongers could soon face the same fate as the Uyghurs, a Muslim Turkic ethnic minority whose members have been rounded up and detained in concentration camps in the province if Xinjiang.
Protesters on Sunday reportedly chanted slogans such as “Stand with Muslims, stand with freedom.”
