Hong Kong set for fresh protests as police end 12-day university siege

HONG KONG: Hong Kong police on Friday said they were ending their siege of a university campus that became a battleground with pro-democracy protesters as activists vowed to hold fresh rallies and strikes in the coming days.

Renewed calls to hit the streets came after Beijing and city leader Carrie Lam refused further political concessions despite a landslide victory for pro-democracy parties in local elections last weekend.

Sunday's district council polls delivered a stinging rebuke to the financial hub's pro-Beijing establishment and undermined their argument that a silent majority were tired of the nearly six months of increasingly violent protests.

They also ushered in a rare period of calm following weeks of spiralling unrest, with no clashes or tear gas battles between protesters and police for more than a week.

But the calm spell looks set to end as public anger grows once more over the lack of response to the election results by Beijing and Hong Kong's leaders.

In China this week, state media has sought to downplay and discredit the weekend ballot while Lam, who boasts record-low approval ratings, has acknowledged public dissatisfaction but ruled out further concessions.

Online forums used to organise the mass movement have since called for a major rally on Sunday and a strike on Monday targeting the morning commute.

"If the communist Hong Kong government ignores public opinion, we will blossom everywhere for five or six days straight. We have to set a deadline," read one post on the Reddit-like LIHKG forum, which got heavy approval from users.

The calls raise the spectre of a return to the kind of weekly political chaos that has battered Hong Kong for nearly six months and plunged the city into recession.

On Friday, police said they were closing the book on one of the most violent chapters of the protest movement -- the siege of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

The sprawling red-brick campus became a battleground on November 17 between police and protesters armed with bows and arrows as well as Molotov cocktails.

The standoff settled into a tense stalemate during which hundreds fled the campus -- some making daring escapes, others caught and beaten by officers during failed breakouts -- leaving a dwindling core of holdouts surrounded by police cordons.

After university leaders said almost all protesters had left, police teams moved in on Thursday to gather a huge haul of Molotov cocktails and other weapons left behind after the occupation.

On Friday, police said the removal of dangerous materials was nearly complete and the campus would be handed back to university officials later in the afternoon.

"Police colleagues from outside will remove the cordon and reopen the roads as soon as possible," Assistant Commissioner of Police Chow Yat-ming told reporters.

Hong Kong's protests are fuelled by years of seething anger over China's perceived erosion of liberties in the semi-autonomous city.

Millions of Hong Kongers marched in protest rallies throughout the summer after Lam's government introduced a bill allowing extraditions to the authoritarian mainland.

It was belatedly withdrawn under public pressure, but by then violent clashes between police and protesters had become the norm and the movement had snowballed into wider calls for police accountability and fully free elections.

Beijing denies stamping out Hong Kong's liberties and has portrayed the protests as a foreign-backed "colour revolution" aimed at destabilising mainland China.