entrance. you can see the trollies being used there. paula, help our viewers understand, the riot police coming into the hong kong international airport. this has not happened. this is a major escalation if they come back in, correct? reporter: this is one of the world s busiest airports. this is a massive transport hub. this is not somewhere that you expect riot police to be coming into. i ve spoken to a number of protesters and they have said that they didn t believe this would happen. they have said that they thought that they were onto a good thing. they thought the fact that they were protesting in the airport meant that they were going to be safe from tear gas and pepper spray and the riot police. now, as we re pointing out, they didn t come far into the hong kong airport. is that a show of force?
forcing hit administrations. now they re akd. they pted more specifics. andrew stevens is at the airport in hong kong where the protesters continue to stream in. any indication we re going to see a repeat of yesterday, andrew? reporter: it s looking very much like it, will. many are asking the question, how much longer can this airport stay open? if you look along here, you ll see the protesters have drawn up a line of trollies. pretty easy to push through it. behind that there are several layers having a sit in they re stopping everyone from getting to their flight. it s peaceful. when a passenger turns around and leaves, they applause and
the protesters seemed in control earlier these astonishing scenes inside the hong kong legislative chamber. protesters seizing the very room where lawmakers usually sit. their message [ speaking foreign language ] reporter: re-reelease the righteous. hold police responsible. take back universal suffrage. they left a path of destruction, sprayed slogans on the walls and defaced the city s code of arms. this was the moment when they smashed through the glass of the council building. after hours of using trollies, barricades and metal poles shielded by umbrellas, the symbol of resistance to chinese domination. cnn was on the scene. just over my shoulder here you can probably hear what sounds like a battering ram. it is a battering ram of sorts. it is one of those barricades
ago, protesters were smashing through this glass here. would he know from the police this is as far as they ll let us go. we can t go into the building. this is the front line looking through the glass. what it seems to have happened, this intense confrontation involving several hundreds of protesters using trollies full of rocks and metal bars to smash through this thick glass here at the government buildings was, it seems, symbolic, symbolic that they wanted to send a message to the government that they want the extradition bill, this bill they fear that eats away at their democracy here that would send certain fugitives to mainland china for trial. they see this as the tip of the iceberg that would eat away at the democratic values and life that they enjoy here, these young people enjoy here in hong kong, that their parents were enjoyed, their grandparents have enjoyed and ultimately they fear that china may take away from them. this has been very symbolic.
here there s no police lined up behind these windows. it s a systematic thud, thud, thud of the crowd using everything they can find, metal bars. they re ripping up some of the barricades that the police have put out here to stop them getting access and literally ripping them up, tearing them apart and using trollies full of rocks, whatever they can to get inside the building. our view is slightly obscured by the mass of umbrellas there that i can just hear that glass crunching with each thud of the rocks, of the metal bars that the people, the protesters, young protesters are using. of course, meanwhile not far away hundreds of thousands of people in peaceful protests in hong kong as they do every year marking the anniversary of the handover from british rule. this year is something