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A leading Hong Kong pro-democracy figure who has been involved in the city’s ongoing protests, is “stable and taking rest in hospital”, after a hammer attack overnight left him bleeding and collapsed on a pavement.

The Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF) denounced on Thursday the “unacceptable acts of violence” against its leader, Jimmy Sham, and other prominent activists and politicians, who have been calling for more freedom in the autonomous Chinese city. 

“It is not hard to link this incident to a spreading political terror in order to threaten and inhibit the legitimate exercise of natural and legal rights,” the CHRF said.

In a separate statement posted earlier on social media, the group said it “strongly condemns” the incident on Wednesday night, and urged police to conduct an investigation “to bring the perpetrators to justice”.

Images posted on social media on Wednesday showed Sham collapsed in a pavement next to a vehicle with blood all over his face and body.

According to the front, between four to five people with hammers attacked Sham about 7:30pm local time on Wednesday (11:30 GMT).

BREAKING: Within 24 hours after US House passing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, Jimmy Sham, the convenor of the Civil Human Rights Front and candidate of District Council Election, was chopped and severely wounded by 4 masked persons this evening. pic.twitter.com/ys4pU98fRY

— Demosistō 香港眾志 😷 (@demosisto) October 16, 2019

Several people nearby reportedly tried to intervene and stop the attack, but were “threatened at knifepoint”.

“The perpetrators then boarded a seven-seater car after the attack and fled,” the statement said.

It was the second attack on Sham in three months. In August he was also attacked by at least two people with a baseball bat and knife.

‘Horrifying attack’

Police later showed up at the scene of the attack on Arran Lane, a few blocks from Mong Kok.

The opposition Demosisto party, however, denounced the officers for failing to “set up any blockade at the crime scene”.

A video posted by Demosisto also showed one police officer stepping on bloodstains at the spot where Sham was attacked.

In a statement, Joshua Rosenzweig of Amnesty International urged authorities to “promptly conduct an investigation into this horrifying attack”.

“Anything less would send a chilling signal that such attacks are tolerated by the authorities,” he said.

Sham, who is running for a seat in the district council election in November, has been at the forefront in the campaign for the Hong Kong government to deliver the so-called “five demands”, including the complete withdrawal of the extradition bill, an independent investigation into alleged police brutality and universal suffrage for the Hong Kong Legislative Council and Chief Executive.

On Thursday, the CHRF urged people to come out and join the protest on Sunday “to stand their ground and show the perpetrators and this regime that we will not stand down”.

Protests in Hong Kong began in opposition to an extradition bill that would have allowed suspects to be sent to China for trial, but have broadened into a pro-democracy movement amid fears that Beijing is undermining Hong Kong’s freedoms. The bill is due to be formally withdrawn this week.

The unrest has plunged Hong Kong into its worst crisis since Britain handed it back to China in 1997 and poses the biggest popular challenge to Chinese President Xi Jinping since he came to power in 2012.

The United States has ordered diplomats from China to notify the State Department before meeting federal and local officials, calling it a “reciprocal” move.

A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the new restrictions announced on Wednesday came in response to restrictions US diplomats faced when trying to meet Chinese officials and academics.

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“Unfortunately in China, US diplomats do not have unfettered access to a range of folks that are important for us to do our job there,” the official told reporters.

“That includes local and provincial level officials, academic institutions, research institutes,” the official added.

“We have to seek permission and such permission is often denied.”

The move comes as Washington and Beijing – the world’s two largest economies – are locked in a bitter trade dispute. A partial deal is now being put down in writing, President Donald Trump said on Wednesday.

Chinese diplomats will now be required to inform the State Department in advance of any official meetings with US diplomats or local or municipal officials, and before any visits to universities or research institutions.

“What we’re trying to achieve here is just to get closer to a reciprocal situation,” the official said, emphasising that Chinese diplomats were not being asked to get “permission” for their visits.

The official said he hoped the measure would prompt Beijing to open up more to US diplomats.

The US decision is the latest in an ongoing diplomatic tit-for-tat with China.

Last week, Chinese Foreign Minister spokesman Geng Shuang had accused the US of harassing Chinese scholars, students, businessmen and scientists through the denial or revocation of visas. 

Geng complained the US was thwarting “normal people-to-people exchange” and infringing on the “safety and lawful rights and interests” of those involved.

China’s Ministry of Public Security also announced last week that it is planning to impose tighter visa restrictions on US nationals with ties to “anti-China” groups, including those employed, or sponsored, by US intelligence services and human rights groups.

The US and China are also at odds over intellectual property rights and human rights questions including freedom of speech.

Donald Trump, the president of the United States, did not object to an agreement between Kurdish-led forces and the Syrian government to stave off Turkey’s cross-border offensive in northeast Syria, according to a senior Kurdish official.

Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), made the comment in an interview broadcast on Kurdish-language Ronahi TV on Wednesday.

Abdi, who said he had a phone call with the US president, said Russia would guarantee the SDF’s agreement with Damascus. 

The Syria-Kurd deal, announced on Sunday, came days after Turkey launched an assault against the Kurdish fighters, which it considers “terrorists”. Ankara said the operation was also aimed at creating a “safe zone” to resettle Syrian refugees.  

Abdi, whose forces were Washington’s main Syrian ally in the battle against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL, or ISIS), has previously said the SDF was forced to turn to Damascus because of Trump’s decision to pull US troops from the region.

The agreement has shifted the balance of power in the region with Syrian government troops entering the strategic city of Manbij. Russia said its forces were patrolling front lines between the Turkish-allied forces and the Syrian army positions outside the city to prevent a confrontation.

On Wednesday, Syrian troops also entered the northern town of Kobane or Ain al-Arab, where Kurdish and US forces had first defeated ISIL fighters more than four years ago.

Abdi told Rohani the agreement with President Bashar al-Assad‘s government requires the Syrian army to deploy across the entire northeast border with Turkey. However, he denied reports that the SDF was handing control of their areas over to the Syrian government forces. 

He said the deal would pave the way for a political solution that guaranteed Kurdish rights in Syria.

Analysts, however, have told Al Jazeera that any agreement would be “costly” to the Kurds as Assad was unlikely to allow the Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria to maintain autonomy over the region. Exact details of the deal between the Kurds and the Syrian government are not clear. 

Trump, meanwhile, has faced criticism at home and abroad for withdrawing US troops from the northeast portion of Syria last week. 

During a news conference at the White House on Wednesday, Trump doubled-down on his decision, calling the withdrawal “strategically brilliant”.

“Turkey has gone into Syria. If Turkey goes into Syria, that’s between Turkey and Syria – it’s not between Turkey and the United States, like a lot of stupid people would like you to believe,” he said. 

Separately, Abdi said operations against ISIL had been paused in light of the Turkish military offensive.

“We have frozen all our actions against Daesh,”  he said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIL.

However, the SDF would continue to be in charge of roughly 12,000 suspected ISIL fighters imprisoned in northern Syria, he said. 

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accepted an invitation to hold talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, over Ankara’s military offensive in northeast Syria

The meeting between the two leaders will take place at the Black Sea resort of Sochi on October 22, a statement by Erdogan’s office said on Wednesday. It gave no further details.   

Putin invited Erdogan “for a working visit in the coming days”, the Russian leader’s office said on Tuesday. “The invitation was accepted,” it added.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Putin, meanwhile, denied speculation that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would join the Russian and Turkish leaders for trilateral talks. Russia is Syria’s main military backer.

Last week, US President Donald Trump abruptly announced the withdrawal of US troops from the northeast region of Syria, clearing the way for a cross-border military campaign by Turkey. 

Turkey’s offensive, now into its eighth day, is aimed at pushing back Kurdish-led forces from the border area and creating a “safe-zone” for the return of Syrian refugees. 

Ankara regards the Syrian Kurdish fighters as “terrorists” linked to Kurdish separatists on its soil.

Following the US withdrawal, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) pivoted to an unlikely alliance with the Syrian government, who have since deployed troops to the border region. 

European powers have moved quickly to censure Turkey over its long-threatened military offensive in northeast Syria.

Soon after Turkish troops launched the cross-border operation on October 9 – aiming to “eliminate” Kurdish fighters it considers “terrorists” from the region – European members of the United Nations Security Council called for an immediate cessation of hostilities. In a joint statement, they said Ankara’s actions could destabilise the Middle East and displace even more people.

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The condemnation was followed swiftly by bans on arms sales to Turkey.

Europe’s top weapons exporters – France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy – all said they would halt the export of arms that Turkey could use in its military operation in Syria.

The swift response to Turkey stands in stark contrast to the resistance most of them showed this time last year when human rights groups had called for similar penalties against Saudi Arabia over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.

The journalist’s murder on October 2, 2018 – carried out by Saudi agents inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul – shocked the world and prompted renewed scrutiny of Riyadh’s actions in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition has waged a years-long campaign against Houthi rebels.

That conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and pushed the Arab world’s most impoverished country to the brink of famine.

As the outcry over Khashoggi intensified, Germany responded with a six-month-long arms ban on Saudi Arabia, but the other four countries continued to ignore calls for action.

France and Britain, in fact, criticised Berlin after it extended the arms ban earlier this year, with London expressing “grave concerns” about the effect the freeze was having on the supply chains of the European defence industry.

‘Hypocrisy’

The UK was ultimately forced to suspend weapon sales to Riyadh in June when an appeals court said it had broken the law by allowing arms exports that might have been used in Yemen’s war. The British government, however, plans to appeal the ruling.

France, Spain and Italy refused to follow suit. That’s despite a recent United Nations report saying countries that sell arms to Riyadh may be complicit in war crimes in Yemen.

“When you compare Turkey to Saudi Arabia, we see an element of hypocrisy in the position of European and other Western countries,” said Marwan Kabalan, Director of Policy Analysis at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha, Qatar.

“This is because countries are less concerned about principles or consistency when it comes to foreign policy. They are mainly seeking their own interests.”

The “double-standard” in policy towards Ankara and Riyadh, according to Kabalan, mainly comes down to the volume of weapons each country imports.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s top arms importer and spent $16.9bn buying weapons in the period between 2014 and 2018, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a defence think-tank. At least $4.9bn of that amount was spent on European arms.

In contrast, Turkey spent $3.4bn on weapons imports in the same period, SIPRI said, half of which went to European countries.

Sinan Ulgen, chairman of the Istanbul-based Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, said Europe’s top arms exporters stood to “forgo a much larger pie if they were to stop arming Saudi Arabia than if they were to stop military exports to Turkey.

“So it is more difficult for them economically to take that step,” he said, noting the European move against Turkey was “not a blanket ban on all military materials” as it only applied to items that could be used in Ankara’s ongoing cross-border operation.

The measure is further weakened, said Andrew Smith, spokesman for the UK-based Campaign Against Arms Trade, as it did not apply to Europe’s existing defence contracts with Turkey.

“This is largely symbolic and is unlikely to make any difference militarily,” he said.

Turkey’s domestic defence industry

Indeed, the move appears to have done little to deter Ankara.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised to continue with the offensive in Syria until the Kurdish fighters laid down their arms.

“Those who think they can make Turkey turn back with these threats are gravely mistaken,” he said on Monday, referring to the weapons bans.

In an editorial on the same day, the pro-government Daily Sabah newspaper said the European moves “have no impact or is very limited on the defence capabilities and inventories of the Turkish military”.

Turkey produces 70 percent of the arms it needs, the newspaper said, and the development of “homegrown air, land and marine platforms has secured Turkey’s success in anti-terror operations both at home and abroad … without relying on imported defence products”.

The desire for self-sufficiency in defence, according to Daily Sabah, was driven by a US arms embargo against Ankara in 1974 when Turkish troops seized the northern third of Cyprus in response to an Athens-inspired Greek Cypriot coup seeking union with Greece.

Under Erdogan, Turkey’s defence exports have boomed, according to figures published by SIPRI.

Ankara’s arms sales have increased by 170 percent in the last four years, with its top buyers being the United Arab Emirates, Turkmenistan and Saudi Arabia.

Despite the allegations of double standards in Europe’s policies on arms exports, the Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies’ Ulgen said there were important differences in Europe’s considerations when it came to Syria and Yemen.

Europe’s main concern over Syria, he said, was that the renewed fighting could revive the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS) armed group and result in those displaced trying to seek refuge in Europe, as they did in 2015.

“Yemen is too far away for Europe as well as the US, in terms of their security landscapes. Syria is much closer,” he said.