Organized opposition to Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement stepped-up the pressure on demonstrators Monday by attempting to clear barricades near one of the main protest sites.
Hundreds of counter-demonstrators, including masked men, scuffled and argued with democracy protesters behind roadblocks on Queensway, a major traffic artery adjacent to the main sit-in site in Admiralty that has been shutdown for over two weeks.
Dozens of taxi drivers joined the confrontation, honking their horns and demanding the occupiers open-up the road to traffic.
Police scrambled to separate the two groups. The counter-demonstrators urged the police to clear the roadblocks, chanting "Open the roads."
As police arrived in greater force, the masked men left the scene. Protesters suspect the group were triads – organized gang members who were active at the city's other major protest site, Mong Kok, police said.
Around the same time of the afternoon clashes, a truck with a mounted crane scooped up metal barriers and tents used by demonstrators further up Queensway.
It was unclear who was operating the truck. A consortium of truck driver associations said last week that they would clear barricades by Wednesday.
The stand-off took place hours after police removed barricades blocking a key highway in the Central financial district in the early morning. Attempts to do the same in Mong Kok was met with stiffer resistance from the protesters, who were able to preserve some of their barricades.
Police said they were not attempting to clear protesters Monday, but trying to unblock sparsely occupied barricades on the fringes of the sit-in venues to relieve some of the heavy traffic caused by weeks of occupation.
"Protesters are urged to remove the road barriers as soon as possible and leave the scenes peacefully and orderly," Hong Kong police said in a prepared statement.
Protesters did the opposite, fortifying old barricades and building news ones with bamboo scaffolding.
Earlier in the day, counter-demonstrators reportedly surrounded the offices of the Apple Daily, a pro-democracy publication whose owner, Jimmy Lai, has been scorned by pro-Beijing camps. The counter-demonstrators were able disrupt the delivery of the newspaper Monday morning.
Hong Kong's embattled chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, spoke to reporters in mainland China where he was attending a forum in Guangzhou.
He said the controversial decision to fire tear gas on demonstrators on Sept. 28 was not his, but a police commander's instead.
He also said there was no need to resign over a report last week that he received millions in undisclosed fees for helping an Australian engineering firm purchase a British property services company he had worked for.
On Sunday, Leung told a local broadcaster there was "almost zero chance" of forcing Beijing to reverse a decision to block public nomination in the 2017 elections for chief executive – a decision which triggered the protests.
Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles TimesOctober 13, 2014, 12:26 a.m.: Updated with Leung Chun-ying's comments to reporters in mainland China.
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