Police are facing still more accusations of excessive use of force after a protester was hospitalized after passing out while being roughly subdued by at least six officers at Prince Edward MTR station last night, though online rumors that the young man suffered a broken neck in the incident appear to be unfounded.
The arrest precipitated an impromptu gathering in the station’s concourse, with police using pepper spray to disperse an angry crowd that had gathered to demand answers.
At least six police officers were caught on camera apprehending the man — who was dressed in black, with gloves and a gas mask — near one of the exits inside Prince Edward station in Kowloon last night. In the video, a woman can be heard yelling at the officers to calm down, adding “You better not hurt him, I’m filming you.”
She can then be heard asking the subdued man for his name and telling him to let them know if he needs to go to the hospital. She’s later heard saying in the video “he’s throwing up.”
When the woman asks officers why they apprehended the man, maintaining he was doing nothing illegal before officers grabbed him and held him down.
The officer tells the woman that they will look at CCTV footage, and adds, “I don’t need to explain myself to you.”
In later footage featured in an i-Cable report, officers can be seen standing around the now-unconscious man, telling him to get up, before dragging him across the station floor.
By that point a crowd had gathered in the station concourse to demand answers from the officers, and riot police were called in to form a barrier between police and protesters.
Members of the crowd can be heard yelling “he’s unconscious — how can he get up?” and, succinctly, “f*** you.”
Paramedics arrived at the scene shortly afterwards and took the man to Kwong Wah Hospital, and officers used pepper spray to clear the concourse.
Speaking to reporters at about 2am this morning, the man’s father said his son had regained consciousness and had sustained injuries to his head and face, though they weren’t “serious.”
He said his son is 21-years-old, and that he wasn’t sure why his son was at Prince Edward last night.
The area around the station has been a flashpoint since Saturday evening, when dozens of riot police charged through the station, beating and pepper spraying protesters and commuters on the platform and inside a train compartment.
The incident drew widespread condemnation — are bore more than a little resemblance to a July mob attack on protesters at Yuen Long MTR. Since Saturday, protesters have taken to surrounding Mong Kok police station, which is nearby, to point laser pens at the building and to lay floral tributes outside the station for the people who were beaten in the melee.
Protesters returned to the area outside the station again last night, with RTHK reporting that police ultimately fired bean bag rounds into the crowd, which dispersed at around 1am this morning.
Meanwhile, more police action in another part of Kowloon also drew criticism when some 20 police officers stopped and searched a double-decker bus because they believed protesters had boarded it after blocking Nathan Road in Mong Kok and Lung Cheung Road in Wong Tai Sin with makeshift barricades.
According to Ming Pao, police boarded Kowloon Motorbus’ 42C service bound for Lam Tin, and searched passengers’ belongings and checked their IDs for two hours.
https://www.facebook.com/mingpaoinews/posts/2518102678249852?__xts__[0]=68.ARCZNUorABxbMSkVQgdkc-QGXDxzZRAjbx-QhdAe1LI7-GYCA2Ka7_Ml4VVMHTtknxwh7lO12qWVvbixM9iBcPk3ssTEaEu61nZq2UZidgm9f8_YPYJdEwJAxseCBIccvrM9-55qk_qwItj1Jhe5TxteLCkIKT_HVA1ecaLemSqXlJxCzF69qQ-pdfciFzEtsjXvE-pWUblgIrjFjGCtMS6mxhD-U0cz2aNTa4rkfMnPsCT1kd2swvpvL-UeWPRz6repCe3O9r2U8MLMEgdhnADomZzGeGwLmEHHk2Id4B-hqDimSiGE0XWsm7VymnDoCpnRoJ4QMKz2AeaoF50Sqq8s7g&__tn__=-R
An Apple Daily livestream shows that as the search was going on, a large number of people — including angry residents and commuters — gathered outside the bus and began chanting “release them.”
Apple Daily reports that about 32 people — 27 men and five women, including two minors — were arrested in relation to the bus search.
