A Remembrance Day to remember with horror

One can't help but wonder if the District Council elections will go on 

as scheduled after what happened in Sai Wan Ho this morning 

No one cares about Midway -- the battle and movie -- 

with skirmishes going on in Sai Wan Ho and elsewhere today!

Did the riot police check out what was on Sai Wan Ho's 

Lennon Wall while in the area this afternoon?

After Saturday was unexpectedly peaceful, I expected some action to unfold on Sunday since I know that plenty of Hong Kongers still feel that they have a lot to protest about as well as seek revenge for.  It had been suggested that protesters go "shopping" from 2pm but while I did catch sight of riot police standing guard outside Times Square yesterday afternoon, I didn't witness any protest action taking place in that shopping mall -- or for that matter, any other part of Causeway Bay -- when I was there.  

Upon returning home that evening though, I saw reports of there not only having been protests in a number of shopping malls in other parts of Hong Kong but also their descending into skirmishes that had the police firing more tear gas and making more arrests.  I proceeded to spend a number of hours glued to my computer following the news -- and was particularly disinclined to go to sleep until late last night as a result of watching a live stream and reading reports of journalists seeking in vain to locate a man beaten up by police at Festival Walk into unconsciousness; with many strongly suspecting that that he had been killed and that the authorities were going to hide his death, like is believed to have been the case at Prince Edward MTR station (on August 31st). 

It would not be an exaggeration to say that I had dark forebodings last night of what would ensue in the next 24 hours or so.  And things were not helped by my knowing that protesters had called for another general strike to take place today, Remembrance Day.  Nonetheless, I still wasn't prepared for the news that greeted me after I woke up this morning and began checking to see what had already happened: not only of widespread transport disruptions having already occurred but also protesters having been shot with live rounds by a police officer at Sai Wan Ho, with one left critically injured though you'd not know by the way he was being treated by the members of the local constabulary in the immediate aftermath.  

Soon afterwards, I came across a video of a traffic cop using his motorcycle to ram into protesters.  Especially with the police appearing to feel like they have a license to kill, I really did get a sense that there would be carnage on the streets today; and this since, unwilling to let up even after the shock actions of the morning, the police soon returned to Sai Wan Ho and gave the residents there even more cause to get angry by unleashing tear gas onto the area.  

Amazingly, even though one increasingly gets the sense that the police can't kill us all but wish they could, there still was protesters determined to resist out on the streets of Hong Kong beyond Sai Wan Ho today -- and, frankly, so much of it that it's well nigh impossible to mention them all in a single post.  As an example though, the Central Business District once again saw lunchtime protests by area office workers this afternoon.

This time around, however, the police decided to tear gas even those protesters.  Even more of a shock was riot police invading several university campuses and clashing with students there; with still more tear gas being fired and arrests made on the campuses and/or vicinity of the University of Hong Kong, Chinese University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. 

Late into the night, the protests are continuing and so too the clashes.  To put it mildly, Hong Kongers remain very angry and defiant as well as distraught.  For Hong Kong has fallen further along the deepening cycle of violence than many of us could ever have imagined just a few short weeks or months ago; with the likes of the evening of the peaceful Hong Kong Way feeling like an eternity ago, never mind those days before Carrie Lam decided to go about proposing an extradition bill that has brought millions of people out on the streets and, sadly, way more violence than we ever wanted to see too.