Hong Kong leader urges protesters to ‘sit down and talk’

[TomSea]

Hong Kong leader urges protesters to ‘sit down and talk’
By Shibani Mahtani

HONG KONG — Embattled Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Saturday appealed in a Facebook post for dialogue between her government and protesters, as demonstrators again took to the streets and clashed violently with police despite the deliberate closure of subway stops in the vicinity of their planned protest.

“After more than two months of escalated protests, we are all tired. Can we just sit down and talk about it?” Lam said in her post Saturday afternoon. She added that “prolonged fighting is not the way out” of Hong Kong’s crisis and appealed to protesters to take seriously her proposal to launch a platform for dialogue in the city.

Meanwhile, an approved rally in the eastern Kowloon area of Hong Kong again descended into a tense standoff between riot police and protesters. Hong Kong’s MTR Corp., which runs the city’s subway, had suspended service between several stops and closed subway stations in the Kwun Tong area where the protest was planned, leading to heated arguments between residents and staff at the stations.

Read more at:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/hong-kong-leader-urges-protesters-to-sit-down-and-talk/2019/08/24/125244f0-c650-11e9-850e-c0eef81a5224_story.html