Hong Kong in Extremis 

"If they [protesters] continue such dangerous actions, we would have no choice but to use minimum force, including live rounds."
Louis Lau, Hong Kong police spokesman

"The protesters have been reacting to the police."
"We haven't fought back as much as we could. I would be prepared for jail. We are fighting for Hong Kong."
Joris (last name withhold) 23, civil engineer

"Hong Kong's Chief Executive has the responsibility to do everything possible to prevent a massacre. She must order the police to exercise restraint and not to use live ammunition or other forms of lethal force."
"A bloodbath on a Hong Kong campus would be devastating for Hong Kong as a whole."
Malcolm Rifkind, former British foreign secretary

A protester arrested while trying to leave the campus  Reuters

The demonstrations have been ongoing for five months. While Beijing denies it has been interfering in the civil operations of Hong Kong, blaming foreign influences for inciting the people of Hong Kong to engage in violent riots against the police, demonstrators attest to the fact that it is the hand of the Chinese Communist Party exercising its options from Beijing under the direction of President Xi Jinping to wrest total control into the mainland orbit that has caused them to react to protect the island state's semi-autonomy.

Over the weeks of protests vociferous claims and counter-claims, actions and reactions have escalated with violence on both sides turning Hong Kong into a totally disrupted metropolis in virulent discontent with the status quo. Beijing's move to impose greater authority precipitated the unrest and its obvious agenda has strengthened the resolve of protesters. Adult children whose parents are in support of the status quo, including Beijing's transparent entitlement aspirations join the protests in defiance of authority while not disclosing their involvement.

Trapped inside Hong Kong's Polytechnic University with police water cannons and armoured vehicles laying siege on the periphery, raging battles have continued day and night with students determined to escape arrest and incarceration and to carry on with their chosen path of defiance. Students have responded to police tactics by making petrol bombs and hurling bricks with improvised catapults. Someone shot an arrow through a policeman's leg.

Normalcy is elusive; neither the police nor the demonstrators are willing to cede to the other; not to restore calm and reassurance to the business community and international investors, nor to placate the wild emotions of defiant rage against authorities imposing their stealth agenda on the city and its millions of residents. There are injuries aplenty among the protesters.

Some people on the front lines have been injured; scalding chemical burns from the water cannon jets have injured others; the chemicals no doubt related to the colours in the water jets, to enable police to identify those involved in the protests; if they're on the front lines, they must be protest leaders and therefore arrests are mandatory to interrupt the leaders' influence.

Frantic to escape the university siege, activists trapped at the Polytechnic were anxious for release. "If we can only hold on till dawn, more [protesters] might come", one exhausted protester said with faint hope. Among the protesters there were some busy, building fires inside campus buildings. China's financial hub in wild disarray, with major highways blocked off, the tunnel link between the Kowloon peninsula and Hong Kong disrupted, has created chaotic confusion.

Three of the protesters have so far been shot. Universities abroad have recalled their students, enabling their transfer out of Hong Kong, to return to their places of origin, in the U.K. and Canada, leaving the exchange programs in Hong Kong behind. "We've been trapped here, that's why we need to fight until the end. If we don't fight, Hong Kong will be over", 19-year-old Ah Lung declared.

Masks of any kind were outlawed by the administration weeks ago, but that hasn't stopped the wearing of gas masks or the use of handkerchiefs to tie over mouths and noses as protection from the miasma of tear gas floating about. Protesters on the university roof fired arrows and threw flaming projectiles with their catapults toward police lines.

Petrol bombs played havoc on Sunday when violence was at a high-water mark setting fire to armoured police vehicles.

More than 200 devastated parents are sitting outside #PolyU and hoping to see their kids. Several hundred students are still locked in PolyU and these parent are helpless. They can only wait. Nathan Law, Hong Kong