A potentially deadly standoff between Hong Kong police and dozens of desperate protesters barricaded into a university campus moved into a third day Tuesday, as China issued fresh warnings its patience with nearly six months of unrest was running out.

The siege at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) is the most intense and prolonged stand-off of the crisis, which has seen millions take to the streets since June to voice anger at China eroding the territory's unique freedoms.

A new phase that began last week has led to chaos throughout Hong Kong, with schools closed, train lines disrupted and major roads blocked by barricades.

The move by more hardcore members of the protest movement to take over PolyU on the weekend was also a new tactic for them. Previously they had focused on lightning strike protests and acts of vandalism.

With the crisis deepening, China's ambassador to Britain upped the ante on Monday.

"The Hong Kong government is trying very hard to put the situation under control," Liu Xiaoming said.

"But if the situation becomes uncontrollable, the central government would certainly not sit on our hands and watch. We have enough resolution and power to end the unrest."

In another ominous signal, China insisted Tuesday it had sole authority to rule on constitutional matters in Hong Kong.

The warning came as it condemned a decision by the city's high court on Monday to overturn a ban on face masks worn by pro-democracy protesters.

Only China's parliament has the right to rule on Hong Kong's Basic Law -- the city's mini-constitution, Jian Tiewei, a spokesman for the body, said in comments carried by state-run media.

"No other institution has the right to make judgements or decisions," Jian said, according to a state media report posted on the parliament's website.

Jian's comments will deepen concerns that Beijing is chipping away at the autonomy of the financial hub -- the fundamental fear driving the popular movement.

A brief appearance by Chinese soldiers on Hong Kong's streets over the weekend -- supposedly to clean up debris -- had also fuelled concerns that Beijing could intervene militarily to end the crisis.

- 'Rats in a trap' -

The siege at PolyU has seen hundreds of mainly young protesters occupy the city centre campus, repelling police surges with a barrage of Molotov cocktails, arrows and bricks.

AFP reporters at the campus said between 100 and 200 people remained on Tuesday, down from several times that figure at the weekend.

Some tried to escape through manhole covers to evade a tightening dragnet that has seen hundreds of people arrested in the last few days.

In her first public comments on the PolyU crisis, Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam on Tuesday morning urged the remaining protesters to surrender.

She said about 100 were left inside.

Late Monday, dozens slithered down ropes from a footbridge to a road below, where they were whisked away on motorbikes.

In an apparently co-ordinated effort, tens of thousands of Hong Kongers streamed towards the PolyU campus, as clashes simultaneously raged with police nearby in Kowloon.

Footage showed armoured police beating fallen protesters with batons as they lay on the ground. One officer was filmed stamping on the head of a man who was already subdued.

Alleged police brutality is one of the central complaints of the protest movement, but senior officers say their officers are acting in accordance with the law.

"I totally disagree that our officers are out of control and have used excessive force. We use force when there is violence," incoming Hong Kong police chief Chris Tang told the South China Morning Post.

Inside the campus, exhausted and scared protesters sounded notes of defiant even as they rationed their remaining food and bottled water.

"I will run but never surrender. I don't want to get arrested," said a protester who gave his name only as 'W'.

"We are like rats in a trap."

- Eroding freedoms -

Protests started in June as a peaceful condemnation of a now-shelved China extradition bill.

They morphed into a confrontational action to defend the city's unique freedoms, which were meant to be enshrined in he Basic Law when Hong Kong was handed over by the British in 1997.

The unrest has tipped the international financial hub into recession, frightened off tourists and pummelled the vital retail sector.

Violence has worsened this month, with two men killed in separate incidents.

Demonstrators last week engineered a "Blossom Everywhere" campaign of blockades and vandalism, which shut down sections of Hong Kong's transport network and closed schools and shopping malls.

Desperate Hong Kong protesters explore sewers in campus escape bid
Hong Kong (AFP) Nov 19, 2019 - Arms covered in cling film and torches in hand as they drop into the sewers, clusters of pro-democracy protesters still inside a Hong Kong campus are plotting increasingly ingenious -- and desperate -- ways to escape a police siege.

Among the detritus of a scorched and graffiti-sprayed concourse at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, several plastic covers -- some with torches placed above them -- betray extraordinary underground escape plans.

Protesters have removed metal manholes, some making exploratory forays into the fetid tunnels, following rumours of successful exfiltrations from a campus ringed for three days by baton-wielding police determined to arrest them.

Pockets of protesters, some with thick bandages wrapped around their knees in anticipation of a long crawl to freedom, knot the holes discussing an unlikely -- and highly dangerous -- breakout.

AFP reporters saw one group on their stomachs practising crawling. Another group hugged each other in consolation after apparently agreeing not to take the route down into the unknown.

"The people outside can't help us," a protester told local television as he prepared to descend into a sewer. "So what can we do?"

One protester, gas mask on, and cling film wrapped around his arms, carried a torch as he descended with his backpack down the metal rungs into the subterranean gloom.

Desperation has stalked the protesters for two days since an occupation of the city centre campus turned into a police siege.

"We can get through today... I don't know about tomorrow," Fung, 43, a kitchen volunteer helping feed protesters in a campus canteen told AFP on Monday.

So far the daring escape bids have been matched by their danger.

Late on Monday dozens of protesters in civilian clothes slid down several metres of rope onto a flyover, where a cavalcade of motorbikes conducted a smash and grab rescue mission.

Police said 37 of the escapees and bike drivers were later arrested -- but many others are thought to have got away.

- 'Liberty or Death' -

Earlier Monday scores of protesters faced a gauntlet of batons from Hong Kong's bruising riot cops as they made a dash along another bridge.

Some escaped but images showed those who did not on the receiving end of brutal flurries of baton strikes, kicks and stamps.

On Tuesday a group of around 20 protesters who had moved from the campus into a nearby building overnight slipped away, after riot police left their post.

"It's at most 10 years in jail if I am convicted of rioting," said Issac, aged 17. "But it will be a whole life in a larger prison if I stop coming out."

The teenager said that although his decision to leave would give him "a sense of shame", the remaining protesters needed to split up.

"I knew we couldn't leave together," he said. "But If we all got trapped and arrested, the movement would fail and die because I believe most of the frontliners were on campus."

Under-18s have also been escorted out by teachers -- their details taken but not immediately arrested on exit from the campus -- while Monday was pock-marked by sporadic failed escape bids by clusters of protesters.

Inside, desolation has replaced defiance.

"Liberty or Death" has been sprayed on the glass entrance to one building, where a 7/11 has been looted and a Bank of China ATM has been smashed up.

Classroom furniture, bottles for petrol bombs, mats, bollards and bins are chaotically piled across the campus, whose walls are scarred by scorch marks from large fires.

Black clothes, the colour of a rebellion whose narrow initial aims against a specific law have widened into calls for democracy in Hong Kong, are strewn everywhere as the mainly young activists shed protest 'uniforms' before making a break for it.

A hardcore contingent remains, willing to defend the campus despite stark warnings by police that officers are ready to use lethal force if they come under attack.

Tears in his eyes, exhausted and injured in one leg, Wong explained the dilemma of a youth movement whose lives have been upended by months of protest.

"If I give up can I face those who have sacrificed?" he said, of those arrested in the campus siege.

"I don't mind giving up my future so that others can step on our bodies and keep going forward."

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Anger, guilt stir Hong Kong's white collar rebels; 500 Govt supporters march
Hong Kong (AFP) Nov 15, 2019
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