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Mainland, Taiwanese students flee HK’s protest-riven campuses
[Asia Times] Batches of students left universities for the mainland via police ferry or bullet train, but evacuation deniedA ship from the Hong Kong police’s marine division emerged from the morning mist of Hong Kong’s Tolo Harbor at dawn on Wednesday and quietly berthed at a pier near the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in the New Territories where a group of students carrying suitcases had been waiting anxiously to board. The boat soon cast off for a destination said to be a police facility close to the city’s border with mainland China, after constables inspected the identity documents of the students as only mainlanders were allowed onboard. The seemingly covert police evacuation operation was carefully planned and carried out in the early hours, when most of the black-clad protesters – local CUHK students and outsiders – were still sleeping under the stars on a footbridge leading to the main entrance of the campus after a night of fierce battles with riot police involving Molotov cocktails, tear gas canisters and rubber bullets. More ferry rides to safety would be arranged for remaining mainland students at CUHK, and the police also confirmed during a press briefing Wednesday afternoon that they had deployed a boat to help non-local students who wished to leave the campus since main roads were all barricaded and the nearby train station was shut amid widespread vandalism. The numerous mainland students who study at tertiary institutions in Hong Kong are packing up and leaving, flustered by the ongoing chaos that has spilled over onto their campuses and inevitably affected their lives when many merely wanted to stay out of the raging altercations. Even the most apolitical ones are now wondering in trepidation if their continued stay at CUHK and other universities would be safe, and some were urged by their concerned parents to return home immediately. Related: Chinese University of Hong Kong: 2019-11-13 Police Besiege Hong Kong Campus in Nighttime Clashes With Student Protesters Chinese University of Hong Kong: 2010-02-02 China says Obama can't Meet with the Dalai Lama Posted by: 3dc 2019-11-16 |
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