Hong Kong | Airport’s plea to protesters: spare our passengers

Hong Kong’s airport used a newspaper advertisement to appeal to protesters, asking them not to target the transport hub ahead of another weekend of anti-China demonstrations in the city.
Groups of protesters staged sit-ins at malls near train stations over the weekend but the civil action failed to match the mass demonstration of last weekend that halted traffic to and from the airport.
“Spare our passengers further disruption,” read a half-page ad from the Airport Authority Hong Kong in the South China Morning Post, the territory’s most well-known English-speaking newspaper. In the ad, the authority urged demonstrators “not to disrupt the journey of tens of thousands of travelers who use our airport every day.”
Riot police and uniformed officers were out in large numbers, making their presence felt at stations and at the airport building. One man, who would only identify himself as Wong, was ejected from the bus terminus at the airport where he had been sitting on a bench. Court bailiffs, a lawyer and Airport Authority Hong Kong officials read him an injunction preventing obstructions or operations at the airport.
The train connecting the city center and the airport was prevented from stopping at three other stations – Kowloon, Tsing Yi and AsiaWorld-Expo – from 9 a.m. to control flows into and out of the airport.
Hong Kong’s Civil Aviation Department urged the public not to fly drones near the airport, saying that it had seen online posts discussing the possibility.
Last weekend saw some of the most violent confrontations since the unrest broke out in Hong Kong three months ago. Protesters, who oppose China’s tightening grip on the former British colony, vandalized turnstiles at train stations to the airport and the high-speed rail link to the terminal was suspended.
Turnstiles and ticket machines at a subway station were vandalized on Wednesday night, spurring the operator, MTR Corp., to “strongly condemn” attacks on staff and destruction of their facilities. The railway network has been a key target of the demonstrators, with several lines closed last weekend amid heightened tensions. Footage showed police swinging batons at protesters as they clung to each other in subway cars. DB/Agencies