India, Aug. 6 -- The anti-Government demonstrations in Hong Kong are now eight weeks old and still going strong but the level of violence is rising. A lot of the violence is down to the police and to triad gangs, who were hired to attack the demonstrators, of course, but now the People's Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, is demanding that the Hong Kong Government "punish lawbreakers regardless of whether they hold up the banner of 'freedom and democracy'."
Nobody expects a replay of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, but weekend after weekend, the confrontation is growing more tense. China's Defence Ministry even warned that it might use troops to quell the unrest, saying the protests were "intolerable" and th...