Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam says police will delay PolyU entry as safety team makes final bid to convince radicals to leave with siege entering 10th day
- Polytechnic University sends in a group hoping to persuade the few remaining radicals to leave campus
- Police team on standby includes clinical psychologists, doctors and trained negotiators
Hong Kong’s embattled leader has said police will not go into Polytechnic University until the varsity’s management has finished searching for radicals who remain on campus, to try to persuade them to leave.
A 50-strong group made up of PolyU management, security guards, councillors and Red Cross doctors divided into six teams and entered the campus at 9.30am to look for anyone who might still be in hiding.
Lam said a police safety group had been set up, consisting of secondary school principals, psychologists, social workers, paramedics, and trained negotiators to deal with the situation in PolyU, but they would only be called upon if the university failed to break the deadlock.
“We will only enter the campus in an appropriate time, hoping not to provoke people inside,” she said. “I hope the group doesn’t need to be deployed, if PolyU’s working team can successfully persuade people to leave the campus safely. The mission is still about persuading them to come out.”
Lam said she was aware of the tense relationship between police and protesters and that was why they had adopted “cooling” measures.