Multiple people were arrested in Mong Kok in the early hours of Wednesday after crowds gathered outside the local police station in protest.
Around 100 people gathered outside the Mong Kok police station around 9pm on Tuesday, spurred by discontent over the police raid on August 31 where officers charged into the Prince Edward MTR station and used pepper spray and batons against passengers.
Onlookers placed flowers outside an exit of the Prince Edward station, sang songs and chanted slogans at the police station next door.
Officers warned the crowd that they were participating in an unlawful assembly but were booed.
Large crowds have gathered in Mong Kok almost nightly since August 31 after a public outcry over the handling of the people injured during the raid.
At around 1:20am, riot police charged towards protesters and subdued three people outside Allied Plaza, as well as stopping seven more people.
Footage from RTHK showed an officer clubbing a young man with a baton several times despite him already being pinned to the ground.
Ming Pao reported that a 13-year-old girl was among those detained. When an onlooker tried to ask her name, a police officer interjected and said that the onlooker was not a lawyer.
As arrests were being made, some officers shone head-mounted strobe lights at reporters trying to record the scene.
Arrested young people are taken by police onto private cars, as bright torches are shone onto journalists attempting to film the scenes.
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Since June, large-scale peaceful protests against a bill that would have enabled extraditions to China have evolved into sometimes violent displays of dissent over Beijing’s encroachment, democracy and alleged police brutality.
Though the bill has been withdrawn, demonstrators are demanding a fully independent probe into police behaviour, amnesty for those arrested, universal suffrage and a halt to the characterisation of protests as “riots.”
More protests have been planned throughout the week, including a rally at 8pm on Friday at Chater Garden in Central against alleged police brutality at the San Uk Ling Holding Centre. Meanwhile, an “anti-Chinazi” march will be held on Sunday at 2:30pm – protesters plan to march from Sogo department store in Causeway Bay to government headquarters in Admiralty. The organisers have said they will not seek police approval.
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