Universities Cut Semester Short as Protests Roil Hong Kong

HONG KONG — Students on Hong Kong’s university campuses erected roadblocks and gathered bricks in preparation for battle with the police on Wednesday, as residents navigated severe transit disruptions and office workers brawled with officers in the heart of the financial district.

This week’s disruptions are notable because they have strained the city’s infrastructure during ordinary workdays, forcing commuters to choose whether to venture outside and risk being caught up in clashes and tear gas. The protests started in June over an extradition bill that has since been withdrawn, and have morphed into broader demands for democracy and police accountability.

Schools and universities have become flash points. A day after young demonstrators staged a fiery standoff against the police on the fringes of a university campus, classes were called off there for the remainder of the fall semester.

Here’s the latest on the Hong Kong protests.

Protesters barricade entrances of campuses.

Student demonstrators with umbrellas, masks, bricks and shields geared up on Wednesday at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a campus that has become a focal point of the confrontation between the protesters and the police.

Later on Wednesday, CUHK became one of at least two Hong Kong universities to announce that on-campus classes would be canceled for the remainder of the fall semester. (The other, Hong Kong Baptist University, said in an email to students and staff on Wednesday that on-campus classes would be postponed or conducted online.)

On Tuesday night, riot police officers on the fringes of the CUHK campus fired hundreds of rounds of tear gas at demonstrators who set a giant blaze and threw gasoline bombs. The clash lasted for hours and left dozens injured.

Protesters at CUHK, HKBU and other universities built barricades at campus entrances and dug up paving stones throughout the day on Wednesday, in preparation for a potential standoff with the police. Some blocked drivers from entering a tunnel that connects Hong Kong Island with the Kowloon peninsula, and which sits steps from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

The activists say they are defending their campuses from police intrusion. The police assert that they have to stop demonstrators from blocking roads, throwing bricks or trying to disrupt rail services.

Since the protests began, the movement has been driven in large part by high school and university-age students. But until recently, campuses were a relative safe zone from violent clashes.

The government drew criticism for saying children could still go to school.

Large groups of riot police officers disrupted a rally in the city’s financial district around lunchtime on Wednesday, making multiple arrests and beating protesters with batons.

Many of the protesters were there to support the students who had been battling the police at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on Tuesday night. Office workers in suits and ties formed a human supply chain to move water and umbrellas to the front-line protesters.

“The Chinese University students suffered yesterday, come join us,” some of them chanted at bystanders.

When the police swooped in and started beating protesters, the crowd fought back, and a brawl erupted outside a luxury mall that houses an Apple store.

By early afternoon, the streets around the mall had the feel of a militarized zone, and were deserted except for a handful of officers, workers and tourists taking pictures. Some among a crowd of people in office attire started heckling the riot officers, calling them gangsters, driving the police to retreat.

Protesters spent much of the afternoon setting elaborate stone-and-bamboo barricades in the financial district, apparently in an effort to impede police operations. But about two hours after sunset, the police swept in to begin clearing the area, crushing some of the barricades with an armored vehicle.

Beijing accuses protesters of ‘murderous conduct.’

The Chinese central government’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong condemned the flare-up of protest violence, warning in a statement issued online late Tuesday that months of protests had “pushed Hong Kong into an extremely dangerous place.”

“This murderous conduct in broad daylight is brazen terrorism,” the office said of a man who was set alight by protesters on Tuesday. “This shows absolutely no bottom line in behavior, absolutely no humanity or morality, and absolutely no fear of the law.”

The most likely scenario now is that the Hong Kong government will more broadly invoke the city’s emergency regulations ordinance, said Lau Siu-kai, vice chairman of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, a semiofficial advisory body set up by Beijing.

The Hong Kong government invoked the colonial-era ordinance last month to impose a ban on face masks at public gatherings. In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Lau said it might be used again to enact a curfew, although the question of how the police would enforce it remained unclear.

“If people defy a curfew, do you use live ammunition to enforce it?” he said. “That is the decision to be made, the government is still very reluctant to do it.”

Mainland students are leaving Hong Kong.

There were widespread transit disruptions across the Asian financial center on Wednesday, marking the third straight day that protesters had impeded some of the city’s essential infrastructure.

Tiffany May, Keith Bradsher, Ezra Cheung, Austin Ramzy and Chris Buckley contributed reporting.