Rebel City. South China Morning Post Team

We must up the ante and strike now, or we might as well pack up and go home.”

      In his corner of the airport terminal, Lo succeeded in persuading his group. At 3pm that day, he led his squad to join thousands of other black-clad demonstrators who swarmed across the departure area, blocking distressed passengers and airline crew alike. The Airport Authority canceled all outgoing flights after 4.30pm. News of the chaos at Hong Kong’s airport, which generally handled 800 flights daily, swept across the world.

      The airport first featured in Hong Kong’s protests on July 26, when hundreds of flight attendants and airport staff staged a sit-in at the arrivals hall. They wanted visitors to know what happened at the Yuen Long MTR station on July 21, when scores of white-clad men believed to have triad connections attacked train passengers and black-clad protesters wantonly, with police nowhere in sight. That protest passed peacefully.

      On August 5, more than 200 flights were canceled when a record number of pilots, airport ground staff and other aviation industry workers called in sick and joined a citywide strike to press for the movement’s five demands, which included an independent probe into allegations of police brutality, as well as universal suffrage for Hongkongers. On Friday, August 9, Lo and thousands of others showed up at the airport for what was meant to be a three-day sit-in.

      Hong Kong’s anti-government protests were in their third month, and elsewhere in the city, the weekend of August 10 and 11 witnessed some of the most violent clashes between hard-core radicals and police. As mobs rampaged across parts of Tsim Sha Tsui, Sham Shui Po, Wan Chai and Kwai Chung on Sunday, August 11, police responded with tougher tactics. That day, a young woman in the crowd at Tsim Sha Tsui was injured in the right eye, and protesters said she was hit by a beanbag round fired by officers. Police refused to take the blame before investigations were carried out, suggesting that she might have been hit by a projectile from a protester’s catapult. A photograph of the woman, with a bloodied patch over her right eye, rapidly became a symbol of alleged police brutality.

      The airport sit-in should have ended that Sunday, but news of the woman’s injury sparked anger against police and moved tens of thousands of protesters to head for the airport on Monday and Tuesday, August 12 and 13. Many arrived on foot, bringing traffic along nearby roads to a standstill. Several wore eye patches, showing their solidarity with the injured woman. The worst of the airport chaos followed, especially after protesters occupied the departure areas. On Monday alone, more than 180 departures were canceled after 4pm with the airport hoping to resume flights from 6am on Tuesday.

      But more disruption followed, effectively shutting down the airport for a second day. The impact was severe, with 421 flights axed. The airport unrest led to the cancelation of a total of 979 flights. Tens of thousands of travelers were stranded, and many were furious at having to scramble for accommodation or make alternative travel arrangements.

      Some angry travelers accused demonstrators of acting “like the mafia.” Pavol Cacara, 51, from Slovakia, tried reasoning with some of those blocking travelers, but they shrugged him off. “They are turning public opinion against them,” he said. “Is it right to take away the freedom of someone else, when they are trying to fight for their freedom?”

      Australian Helina Marshall burst into tears when her group of five could not leave. She said: “We have an old lady here, 84 years old, and she has heart problems. They can’t let her through, to go back home?” Her elderly companion, Barbara Hill, in a wheelchair, said: “I was sympathetic to their cause, but I think they are harming it by stopping passengers from getting through.” A Thai woman, comforting her son, ticked off protesters, saying: “You can fight with your government, but not me, understand? I just want to go home! We pay money to come to your country but you do this to us. We will never come here again!”

      A few travelers made it through the blockade, including pregnant women and an official Hong Kong team of swimmers heading to Singapore for the FINA World Cup competition. Swimmer Leo Fung pleaded with protesters, saying: “We understand and support what you are doing, but we have qualified and hope to represent Hong Kong at the World Cup. There aren’t that many competition opportunities like this, and I hope you will let us through.”

      Looking back on all that happened at the airport, protester Lo said in February 2020 that he had no regrets. “We were trying to get travelers around the world on our side, and at that point we needed a more radical course of action to grab international headlines, and we succeeded in doing that,” he said. Far from being apologetic for the inconvenience and damage done to Hong Kong’s international reputation, he said: “The airport occupation was a logical and natural progression from road blockades and rail disruption at MTR stations. They were all disruptive, but made a point.”

      Mainland officials watching the increased violence on Hong Kong streets and the shutdown of the airport said it bordered on terrorism. Up until then, Hong Kong’s social movement had received scant coverage in mainland media. But two incidents of violence at the airport on August 13 – when two men wrongly suspected of being undercover state agents were assaulted – unleashed a storm of anger on the mainland against Hong Kong protesters.

      The first man, Xu Jinyang, was surrounded and attacked twice, at 7pm and again at 9pm, after a group of protesters found wooden sticks on him and claimed that the name on his travel documents matched that of an officer from the Futian police station in Shenzhen. The young man told reporters he was from Shenzhen and was at the airport to see off friends who were traveling. He denied he was a public security officer. Protesters surrounded him, secured his hands with cable ties, and would not let paramedics move him after he lost consciousness at about 10pm. It was another hour before he was taken to hospital by ambulance, but there was more trouble outside the terminal as protesters turned on police who had come to help the ambulance leave. Police vehicles were attacked, their windows smashed.

      After Xu was taken away, hundreds of protesters surrounded another mainlander inside the terminal, cable-tying his hands to a luggage trolley. They had found a light blue T-shirt in his backpack emblazoned with the slogan “I love HK police.” Only the previous week, on August 5, a mob wearing T-shirts bearing the same message had attacked protesters with sticks. Despite being detained, the man, later identified as Fu Guohao, smiled and calmly told the mob in English and Cantonese: “I support Hong Kong police. You can beat me now.” Enraged, one protester poured fluid from a bottle over his head, while others punched, kicked and hit him with umbrellas. Fu turned out to be a journalist for the Chinese nationalist tabloid Global Times.

      At the scene was lawmaker Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung, from the pan-democratic Labour Party. He had shown up to try and mediate between the protesters and police. As Fu was being attacked, Cheung urged the angry crowd to stop the violence, but they ignored him. Fu’s ordeal lasted about an hour before he was rescued by dozens of riot police and taken away by ambulance at about 12.30am with scratches on his face.

      Recalling that day’s chaos, Cheung said in February 2020 that he thought the airport occupation was a good tactic to force the government’s hand. “And if the government took a wrong step, it would be a global humiliation and blunt their legitimacy to govern. I went there expecting to prevent aggressive police action,” he said. “When I got there … tempers were frayed and the air was thick with tension … Of course, as a believer in peaceful protests, I don’t agree with violence. But I can understand why the protesters were angry and did what they did.”

      The events at the airport that night brought police into the terminal building. Officers were seen rushing in and subduing some protesters, with injuries reported on both sides. In a late-night chase that lasted about 15 minutes, protesters threw bins and water bottles at police from behind barricades fortified by baggage trolleys, while officers used batons and pepper spray on them. At one point, some protesters grabbed an officer’s baton and began striking him with it. He responded by drawing his gun and pointing it at them, an act criticized by protesters as being disproportionate and dangerous, but defended vigorously by police as an appropriate act of self-defense.

      On the mainland, it was the attack on journalist Fu that drew the biggest response. Chinese social media was awash with vitriol against Hong Kong’s protesters and praise for Fu, who was hailed as a hero for standing