HONG KONG — The police clashed with hundreds of pro-democracy protesters in the densely populated Mong Kok neighborhood early Sunday in the second straight day of violence after demonstrators recaptured blocks of city streets from the police.
More than 100 police officers — many with shields, batons and helmets — faced off against an even greater number of demonstrators and their supporters on Nathan Road, one of Hong Kong’s busiest shopping streets. The police turned a stretch of the southbound lanes of the thoroughfare into a parking lot for their vans and buses.
Officers advanced on the barricades just after midnight. At least three people were hurt, the police said in a statement, which also said that a police officer suffered a shoulder injury. Members of a first-aid station set up by protesters said several protesters were hurt.
The clashes erupted after demonstrators, who had been staging a sit-in in the area around the intersection for almost three weeks, were largely cleared out early Friday in a swift police operation. That backfired that evening and early Saturday, when thousands of demonstrators outnumbered the police, leading the officers to withdraw after clashes that the police say injured 15 officers and 26 protesters. The Mong Kok neighborhood is one of three in Hong Kong that for the past three weeks has been the site of demonstrations by people demanding democratic elections to choose Hong Kong’s top leader, the chief executive.
The clash on Sunday morning followed an announcement on Saturday by Hong Kong’s government that it would hold talks with student protest leaders on Tuesday, the start of a formal dialogue that could ease tensions.
Separately, in his first public comment since the start of the protests, Hong Kong’s police commissioner, Andy Tsang, condemned “radical” protesters for charging the police line and said they had broken the law by gathering in Mong Kok on Friday.
“I have a message from the bottom of my heart: These illegal acts are hurting Hong Kong, hurting our society,” he told reporters on Saturday. He did not answer questions.
Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 after more than 150 years of British rule. As part of the transfer agreement, the territory was to be allowed to run its own domestic affairs for half a century. Hong Kong residents enjoy freedom of speech, assembly and religion, enforced by an independent judiciary.
But Beijing has final say over any changes to Hong Kong’s mini-constitution. The protests were set off when China’s legislature, run by the Communist Party, created guidelines for the 2017 elections that effectively ensured that only candidates approved by Beijing would appear on the ballot for chief executive.
For more than a year, organizers of a movement called Occupy Central With Love and Peace had warned the government that such restrictions, which do not meet international standards for free and fair elections, would lead to the sit-in protests. Organizers said they were prepared to be arrested, citing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Henry David Thoreau as examples in their civil disobedience actions.
In Mong Kok, as the protests entered their fourth week, a group of demonstrators said that for them, the rules had changed.
Mars Ng, Dominic Yuen and Kenny Yeung, all criminology students, stood near the barricades at the corner of Nathan Road and Argyle Street. All three were wearing hard hats to protect themselves against police batons. “For the revolution to be a success it’s important not to get hurt and not to get arrested,” said Mr. Yeung, 25, who said their plan was to run away if the police started arresting demonstrators, describing their protests as a “guerrilla” movement.
“We want everyone to come back to the scene,” he said.