'I thought I was about to die': Eyewitnesses describe beatings by Hong Kong police
HONG KONG — A crumpled tissue dampened with tears lies near Ng Chi Fai as he tells how a routine journey home on the Hong Kong subway landed him in a scene of terrifying chaos.
Business was slow for the chef Saturday night at the restaurant where he boils, steams and fries the Cantonese dishes his customers love. The 53-year-old, a cook since the age of 18, was fretting about getting home, scrolling through the news on his cellphone as protests broke out across the city. Demonstrators were defying a police ban, angered by the arrests of a group of pro-democracy activists.
So he decided to leave early, changed out of his chef’s shirt and hurried to the nearby Lai Chi Kok mass transit railway station.
A wave of irritation swept him as he changed trains at Prince Edward station, where he found a platform crammed with an unusually large crowd for late Saturday night: mainly families with small children, older people and young women dressed in fancy clothes for a night out. He squeezed onto a train with other passengers, including some protesters.
But the train didn’t leave. Announcements suddenly blared, telling people to get off the train and leave the station because there was an emergency.
Then all hell broke loose.
Ng wept silently, reliving his fear as he described police beatings of people that night — some of whom did not appear to be protesters, and others who were prone and not resisting.
“The way the police acted in the station that night, I really thought someone would die,” he said. “When they came down the steps, they just started hitting people. They didn’t look to see if you were a protester or not.”
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