No need for conspiracy theories about the Hong Kong riots. Though the handful of foreign English language reports I've read are all still trying their darnedest to spin it into the Hong Kong police were heavy handed.
So instead here are local TV news reports with videos of key instances during the riots which thankfully someone posted on Youtube. It is in Cantonese with traditional Chinese subtitles but the video pretty much speaks for itself, it is about 25min long and worth watching the entire thing.
Rough chronology of events:
- Health Department officials tried to shut down illegal night time street food stalls.
- Large crowds confronted and surrounded these officials to prevent them from shutting the illegal stalls.
- The Health Department officials called police for backup.
- Police initially treated the incident merely as traffic obstruction.
- Somehow a fringe activist group happened to be holding an unauthorized rally nearby (claimed to be legitimate as it was under 30 people thereby not needing authorization) and called on nearby people to "use all methods" to protect the illegal stalls. The same group appealed to people online to come to the scene equipped to confront police.
- Things deteriorate quickly as police tried to back up the Health Department action, disperse the crowds by getting them to keep to sidewalks, and tried to set up mobile watchtowers. Multiple times the police were ignored or met with curses and political accusations when asking the crowds to disperse.
- A group of police who were vastly outnumbered, surrounded, and shoved around used pepper spray to try to disperse the crowd . It didn't work.
- Elsewhere another group of outnumbered police (traffic cops in bright yellow reflective vests) cordoning off a crowd were attacked with wooden palettes and other large blunt objects. When one policeman fell and laid still appearing incapacitated, members of the crowd continued to rush over and attack him, at which point another policeman fired two warning shots into the air and also pointed his revolver at the crowd to keep them back.
- Riot police arrived on scene to attempt to corral and disperse the crowds. This deteriorated into running street battles with rioting crowds for several hours.
- The rioters were filmed receiving a van load of long metal pipes or poles to use as weapons, forming a line with homemade shields and charging a riot police line, armed with large long wooden or bamboo poles fought with riot police, a rioter appeared to be preparing to set a fire by pouring liquid from a large canister in front of a police line, rioters brought out a large jar of red liquid presumably to use against police and blocked and shoved away media who tried to film them, a rioter stabbed a cameraman with a broken glass bottle, rioters set fires to block streets and pried up bricks and signposts from the sidewalk to attack police with.
It is obvious the Hong Kong police were initially taken by surprise as things went from bad to worse. Even though the police tried to communicate and only use minimal force when necessary the crowds kept on escalating the violence. After the riot police arrived they were able to contain and eventually disperse the rioters. No need for the PAP or the PLA. No further related violence have occurred since then, dozens of arrests have already been made, and investigations are ongoing.
