Police officers searched people at Yuen Long MTR station on Tuesday evening, seven years since men dressed in white attacked the camp and indiscriminately attacked bystanders and protesters returning from a demonstration earlier that day.
According to REPORTS according to independent local media, about a dozen plainclothes police officers were at the MTR station on Tuesday afternoon.
Among those searched by police was activist Lee Ying-chi. Officers searched her bag and found documents inside a folder that read: “What the hell are you looking for?”
Tuesday marked seven years since the Yuen Long mob attack on the night of July 21, 2019, when it ended a hundred men in white shirts rushed in Yuen Long MTR Station.
attack, that left dozens injuredmarked a turning point in the pro-democracy protests and riots that year. The police were heavily criticized for their slow response and failure to stop the violence in time.
Lee and other people who came to the MTR station on Tuesday evening carried watermelons in an apparent reference to one of the suspected mobsters seen seven years ago, a watermelon farmer.
Speaking to reporters, she said many of the men in white shirts who carried out the attack fled the scene, while those who acted in self-defense were jailed.
Official accounts of the attacks shifted from conciliatory to defensive in the two years that followed, with the police superintendent eventually calling the incident a “gang war”.
‘why did you leave’
A man at the station on Tuesday, surnamed Chan, was released after being searched. “Why did you leave 721?” he asked in Cantonese, referring to the date of the mob attack. “If any of you were here, the white shirts wouldn’t have caused chaos, nothing would have happened.”
Another man who was wearing a T-shirt reading “Find out the truth, face justice” was also searched by police officers and then released.
Meanwhile, an elderly woman in a black T-shirt displayed printed photos of two officers leaving the station before the 2019 attack. “Where were the police on 721?” she yelled at police officers on Tuesday.
She and a female companion were taken aside and surrounded by five MTR employees for questioning.
To date, a total of 13 men in white shirts have been convicted and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to seven years, according to a report by independent media outlet The Collective.
In February last year, former MP Lam Cheuk-ting and six others were imprisoned for rioting, years after they were attacked by white-clad mobs in 2019.
