Protesters have four additional demands, calling for: the authorities stop calling the protests ‘riots’;Online Cigarettes Store USA amnesty for arrested protesters; an independent inquiry into police brutality; universal suffrage; the withdrawal of the extradition bill.
Lam, the Hong Kong Chief Executive since 2017, has doubled down, saying that they will not give in to protesters' demands.
There have been lulls in the violence and intensity of the protest movement. But the death of a university student Newport 100s Box from a fall last week has reignited rage.The protesters blame police for the student's injury because he fell off a parking garage in the vicinity of a police clearance operation.
The escalation at Polytechnic University began earlier in the week, following a pitched struggle on Monday between police and protesters who had attacked toll booths and blocked the Cross Harbour Tunnel, one of three underwater tunnels in Hong Kong, which emerges on the island right beside the university. Police retaliated with tear gas.Thousands of students and protesters blocked entrances, torn up brick sidewalks for ammunition, and lined every vantage point with Molotov cocktails. The university's swimming pool, emptied of water, has become a practice firing range. Some walked around with bows and arrows, many blunt training arrows, others sharpened or wrapped in gauze, ready to be lit on fire.
Protesters withdrew to Polytechnic University, a Zaha Hadid-designed building, which normally serves Cheap Newport 100s cigarettes 27,000 students, and started fortifying it.