Urgent Evacuation Taking Place at Hong Kong Parliament Amid Protests

By Staff, Agencies

Earlier on Tuesday, Hong Kong's railway operator MTR closed 19 subway stations due to public unrest, the subway administration said. Hong Kong has been engulfed in protests in the past several months after the government said it was going to adopt a bill that would allow fugitives to be extradited to mainland China.

The Hong Kong parliament, the Legislative Council, has announced urgent evacuation of its staff amid ongoing rallies, which have already resulted in violent clashes between protesters and the police.

"The Legislative Council [LegCo] Secretariat issued a Red alert at 3.55pm [07:55 GMT] today [October 1]. All persons are required to evacuate the LegCo Complex immediately under safe circumstances," the Legislative Council Secretariat said in a statement on Tuesday.

A few protesters have been apprehended by police officers in Hong Kong for their possible involvement in violence during the protests on Tuesday, a Sputnik correspondent reported. The protesters, seemingly in their early 20s, were arrested at the building known as York Place in Hong Kong. When the correspondent asked a female officer at the scene of the detention why the people were being detained, she declined to give any reasons and referred any related questions to her supervisors.

Earlier in the day, Hong Kong's railway operator MTR closed a total of 19 subway stations due to public unrest, according to the administration of the subway system.

Over the past months, Hong Kong has faced waves of rallies against now-withdrawn amendments to its extradition law, which proposed extraditing fugitives to mainland China. Rallies continued even after the bill was scrapped, with protesters demanding an investigation into alleged police violence, denied by the law enforcement, and end of legal proceedings against participants of the rallies.