PolyU search uncovers huge haul of petrol bombs, bows
Print Edition
HONG Kong police yesterday entered a ransacked university campus where authorities faced off for days with barricaded protesters, gathering a huge haul of petrol bombs and other dangerous materials left over from the occupation.
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University became the epicenter of the territory’s increasingly violent protest movement when clashes broke out on November 17 between police and protesters armed with bows and arrows as well as Molotov cocktails.
Rioters gathered around PolyU had used the campus to launch assaults on police officers.
The standoff settled into a tense stalemate during which hundreds fled the campus — some making daring escapes, others caught by officers during failed breakouts — leaving a dwindling core of holdouts surrounded by police cordons.
When police and firefighters moved in yesterday — 11 days after the siege began — for an operation to secure dangerous objects now littered across the once placid campus and to collect evidence, no sign of rioters were found.
Riot police in tactical gear began gathering hundreds of discarded petrol bombs and bottles of chemicals that had been looted from the university laboratories as well as archery bows and a makeshift catapult.
Explosives experts went from room to room followed by a gaggle of reporters, passing walls daubed with graffiti insulting the city’s police force.
Officers gathered a rapidly growing pile of items in a courtyard, from half-full jerry cans of petrol, to Molotovs made out of wine bottles and various chemicals in brown glass bottles.
As of 2pm yesterday, police had seized more than 600 petrol bombs, dozens of arrows and several long bows, as well as a lot of flammable items.
Crime scene investigators could be seen dusting multiple objects for fingerprints, including cars parked in a basement that had been emptied of petrol from their tanks.
Police spokesman Chow Yat-ming said the priority for yesterday’s operation was not the arrest of any holdouts who might still be hiding.
“The objective is not about people, it’s about the dangerous items on campus,” he told reporters. “But if we encounter any protesters or any person remaining inside then we’ll try to convince them to seek medical treatment.”
The university now faces a mammoth clean-up operation.
Swathes of the red-brick campus resemble an abandoned battleground covered in debris, barricades and the shattered bottles of Molotov cocktails.
A foul odor from rotting food in a canteen and overflowing garbage bins permeated parts of the campus.
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