Dozens of pro-democracy protesters stood firm within a besieged Hong Kong campus on Wednesday, where an “SOS” sign was laid out as police said they had made 700 arrests since the university became the epicentre of the most intense confrontation in the city’s near-six month crisis. The four-day standoff between demonstrators and police at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has also rippled overseas, with the UN’s human rights office urging a peaceful resolution, while the US senate passed new legislation supporting protesters’ demands. The focus of nearly six months of increasingly savage anti-China protests has shifted to the PolyU campus, a stone’s throw from the city’s harbour, where hardcore protesters have held off riot police with Molotov cocktails, bricks and arrows.
