Hong Kong office workers and high-school students have turned out in their hundreds under a sweltering midday sun to denounce a policeman for shooting and wounding a teenager during the most violent clashes in nearly four months of unrest.
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The office workers gathered in Chater Garden in the Central business district as the students, some in the same class as the wounded 18-year-old, demonstrated outside his New Territories school.
More than 100 people were wounded during Tuesday's turmoil, the Hospital Authority said, as anti-China demonstrators took to the streets across the Chinese-ruled territory, throwing petrol bombs and attacking police who responded with tear gas and water cannon. Police made more than 180 arrests.
One officer responded by shooting the 18-year-old school student in the chest with a live round after he came under attack with a metal bar, video footage shows. The teen was in stable condition in hospital on Wednesday.
Protesters outside the wounded student's school, the Tsuen Wan Public Ho Chuen Yiu Memorial College, chanted "Free Hong Kong", condemned the police and urged a thorough investigation.
"(It's) ridiculous, it can't happen, and it should not be happening in Hong Kong," said one 17-year-old who goes to the same school.
"It really disappointed me and let me down about the policeman. I don't know why they took this action to deal with a Form Five student. Why do you need to shoot? It's a real gun."
Protesters have previously been hit with anti-riot bean-bags rounds and rubber bullets and officers have fired live rounds in the air, but this was the first time a demonstrator had been shot with a live round.
Police said the officer involved was under serious threat and acted in self-defence in accordance with official guidelines.
Tuesday's protests, on the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, were aimed at propelling the activists' fight for greater democracy onto the international stage and embarrassing the city's political leaders in Beijing.
The former British colony has been rocked by months of protests over a now-withdrawn extradition bill that would have allowed people to be sent to mainland China for trial but have evolved into calls for democracy, among other demands.
The outpouring of opposition to the Beijing-backed government has plunged the city into its biggest political crisis in decades and poses the gravest popular challenge to President Xi Jinping since he came to power.
The pro-establishment Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong condemned Tuesday's violence and urged the government to impose emergency laws to resolve the crisis.
Australian Associated Press
