Up to 88% of Hong Kong Population Exposed to Tear Gas Since June

King Ng, once a healthy, 72-year-old retired mechanical engineer, now suffers from headaches so severe he often can’t sleep. He’s taken two weeks’ worth of antibiotics for an upper respiratory infection, yet his throat is still itchy and dry and he has a lingering cough. #HongKongProtests #HongKong #China

Three months ago, Ng inhaled tear gas through the closed—but not airtight—windows of his second-floor apartment. Hong Kong police have used tear gas to quell pro-democracy protests almost every weekend and occasionally on weeknights since June 12. They’ve fired nearly 6,000 rounds in total, according to a tally of figures released in police briefings, in areas home to as much as 88% of Hong Kong’s 7.4 million residents.

On that particular day, Aug. 5, police fired 800 rounds of tear gas as the demonstrations spread through 14 of Hong Kong’s 18 districts, including Ng’s neighborhood, Wong Tai Sin, which has the territory’s highest concentration of elderly. Most of the district’s residents live in crowded public housing towers, where the median per capita income is just $21,500 a year. “We’re the lowest on the food chain here,” Ng says, shrugging. “I feel a bit angry because it’s not only the elderly people and children here, but everybody in Hong Kong is suffering from the tear gas.”

While other politically troubled areas— Cairo, Caracas, the West Bank—have been more heavily tear-gassed, according to human-rights groups, the amount used in Hong Kong is unprecedented for a tightly populated urban capital. Depending on wind conditions, building density, and where it’s released, the gas often can’t escape or has nowhere to go but up into the windows of residential tower blocks. While protesters have occasionally employed stationary tactics, including staging sit-ins at the airport, Hong Kong’s demonstrations have on the whole been unusually mobile, shifting as they move through the city—a strategy the participants call “Be Water.” Officers have chased them through parks, shopping malls, train stations, and residential areas, firing tear gas as they go. Nursing homes have been exposed, as have playgrounds.

The use of tear gas is banned in warfare under the Geneva Protocol, but allowed for riot control. Police in Hong Kong have described it as the “minimum force necessary to disperse rioters” in official statements and defended its widespread use. “In simple words, protesters chose the location, the police had to deal with them where they gathered and where they may cause violence or damage to public safety and public peace,” said Secretary for Security John Lee during a press conference the day after the Aug. 5 citywide demonstrations.

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