Hong Kong descended into chaos Sunday
night as riot police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at anti-government
protesters hours after China’s office in the city was daubed with eggs and
graffiti in a vivid rebuke to Beijing’s rule.

Acrid clouds of tear gas wafted through the city’s densely packed
commercial district as police battled masked protesters after another huge
protest march, with seemingly no end in sight to the turmoil engulfing the
finance hub.

A group of masked, stick-wielding government supporters also descended on
a group of protesters in a train station, beating multiple people including
reporters who live-streamed the assaults.

Hong Kong has been plunged into its worst crisis in recent history by
weeks of marches and sporadic violent confrontations between police and
pockets of hardcore protesters.

The initial protests were lit by a now-suspended bill that would have
allowed extraditions to mainland China.

But they have since evolved into a wider movement calling for democratic
reforms, universal suffrage and a halt to sliding freedoms in the semi-
autonomous territory.

Tear gas and rubber bullets have become frequent while the city’s
parliament was trashed by protesters earlier this month — as Beijing’s
authority faces its most serious challenge since Hong Kong was handed back to
China in 1997.

On Sunday tens of thousands of anti-government protesters marched through
the streets, the seventh weekend in-a-row that residents have come out en-
masse.

But the march followed a now familiar pattern: a huge peaceful turnout
followed by a night of running clashes with more hardcore groups.

– Pro-Beijing vigilantes –

The attacks by masked men on protesters was a new escalation and will
ratchet up fears that the city’s feared triad gangs are wading into the
political conflict.

Sunday evening’s coordinated assault took place in Yuen Long, a district
in the city’s New Territories near the Chinese border where the criminal
gangs remain influential.

Footage showed the men attacking protesters on the platform and inside
trains.

Similar assaults by pro-government vigilantes took place against
demonstrators during the 2014 “Umbrella Movement” protests.

Earlier in the evening protesters had descended on the Liason Office —
the department that represents China’s central government — which was pelted
with eggs and daubed with graffiti. “We are here to declare that Beijing is
the one violating our governing values and judicial procedures,” a 19-year-
old protester who gave his first name as Tony, told AFP.

“You taught us peaceful marches are useless,” was one of the slogans
sprayed on the Liason Office walls.

Hong Kong’s government condemned both the protesters and the men who
attacked people in their name.

“This is absolutely unacceptable to Hong Kong as a society that observes
the rule of law,” the government said in a statement.

– Few concessions –

Six weeks of huge protests have done little to persuade the city’s
unelected leaders — or Beijing — to change tack on the hub’s future.

Under the 1997 handover deal with Britain, China promised to allow Hong
Kong to keep key liberties such as its independent judiciary and freedom of
speech.

But many say those provisions are already being curtailed, citing the
disappearance into mainland custody of dissident booksellers, the
disqualification of prominent politicians and the jailing of pro-democracy
protest leaders.

Authorities have also resisted calls for the city’s leader to be directly
elected by the people.

Protesters have vowed to keep their movement going until their core
demands are met, such as the resignation of city leader Carrie Lam, an
independent inquiry into police tactics, amnesty and a permanent withdrawal
of the bill.

They have also begun calling once more for universal suffrage.

There is little sign that either Lam or Beijing is willing to budge.

Beyond agreeing to suspend the extradition bill there have been few other
concessions and fears are rising that Beijing’s patience is running out.

– ‘Polarisation deepening’ –

In the afternoon a huge crowd marched through the streets calling on the
city’s pro-Beijing leader Carrie Lam to heed their demands. Organisers said
some 430,000 people turned out.

“Stop turning a deaf ear to the Hong Kong people’s demands,” Bonnie Leung,
from the Civil Human Rights Front, told reporters after the march.

“Carrie Lam really needs to respond and I hope we will see that soon.”

On Saturday, the establishment mustered its own supporters in their tens
of thousands for a rally, a gathering that was covered in detail by Chinese
state media and pro-Beijing newspapers in Hong Kong.

Few see a political solution to the crisis on the horizon.

Steve Vickers, a former head of the police’s Criminal Investigation Bureau
before the handover who now runs a risk consultancy, said the public order
situation would likely “worsen” in the coming weeks.