Hong Kong airport suspends check-ins due to pro-democracy protest

Hong Kong airport on Monday suspended check-ins for all remaining flights due to pro-democracy protests taking place inside arrival terminals, according to reports.

The protests have been ongoing for four days at the terminal and have been shouting, “No rioters, only tyranny,” Reuters reported.

Hong Kong International Airport said in a statement that the demonstration "seriously disrupted" airport operations. It said all check-in services for departing flights had been suspended. It said only those flights that have already completed the check-in process will move ahead.

The U.S. State Department slammed the Chinese government Thursday, accusing it behaving like a “thuggish regime” after a state newspaper published personal information of an American diplomat in Hong Kong who reportedly spoke with supposed “Hong Kong independence” activists.

“I don’t think that leaking an American diplomat’s private information, pictures, names of their children – I don’t think that is a formal protest, that is what a thuggish regime would do,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said at a news briefing in Washington on Thursday.

More than two months of mass demonstrations in Hong Kong have given way to routine clashes between protesters and police. As protesters lead police from neighborhood to neighborhood, leaving hastily constructed roadblocks in their wake, residents across the districts have increasingly been caught in the fray.

Not all are supportive of the movement, which began in June against an extradition bill that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be sent to the mainland to stand trial. It has since morphed into calls for broader democratic reforms and violent acts of defiance against police, who in turn have been accused of excessive force and deliberate negligence.