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Be careful everybody. I just got hit straight in the face by some projectile fired by the police. Luckily the mask took the pressure off it and it just smashed the mask. Maybe tear gas? #HongKongpic.twitter.com/maaDJpAc5U
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And here’s the response from
#China’s nationalist trolls who’ve been unleashed on me. This anonymous warrior says: “How did that not kill you dog fucker? Fuck your mother to death.”@HuXijin_GT is your Global Times happy now? Going to quote this tweet?pic.twitter.com/oqf88nnW8a
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“Do not fire directly at persons”? I guess the
#HongKong police forgot to read the instructions?pic.twitter.com/1n4tzu0DJH
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Or perhaps it was one of these that hit me in the face smashing the tear gas mask I was wearing. A lot of these rubber bullets were fired today and they’re all over the road in parts of
#HongKong. Dear tear gas mask company thanks for making your masks strong.#Chinapic.twitter.com/3fWaFPLMLG
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Before yesterday the police has fired 1000 rounds of tear gas since the 9th of June.
#HongKong police just announced that - only yesterday -they fired a further 800 rounds of tear gas here. There were also 148 arrests on Monday. The escalation on all sides has been significant.Show this thread -
People have asked for some more details of what happened on that day. In short the police lines moved forward quickly pushing both protestors and the media towards the street. Two of us were separated from another team member. The whole time we were on the side of the road [cont]
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The police then stopped moving forward and the protestors stopped retreating. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets towards the protestors and protestors tried to throw the tear gas canisters back at them. [cont]
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I wanted to find our other team member so I starting walking up the side of the road to try and cross back over past the police lines (we've done this many times but perhaps not in such a tense situation).
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Unlike the protestors dressed in black with their yellow helmets I had a long sleeve light blue shirt with a high vis vest saying "media". My helmet was blue. I walked forward with both hands up in the air and my producer was behind me.
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Then, while I had both hands in the air, with "media" markings etc, one of the police shot me straight in the face from perhaps 15 metres away. The face mask took the brunt of whatever was fired.
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If it had been a tear gas round I think it would have dropped to the ground and there would have been a lot of tear gas immediately under me. I can't be sure but, for this reason, I think it was more likely to have been a rubber bullet.
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Needless to say with a shattered mask I got out of the area quickly because so much tear gas was being fired (800 rounds on Monday alone according to the police).
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On reflection it was a bad decision to have tried to cross over at that point at a time of high tensions with projectiles being fired etc, even from the side. What I should have done is just waited to find our other team member later.
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Anyway I hope that's helpful to other media teams in
#HongKong. Be careful: it's definitely getting more dangerous and we need to be ever vigilant in terms of safety despite how many weeks we've all been out there.Show this thread
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