Crowd Of Protesters In Hong Kong Parts Like The Red Sea To Make Way For Ambulance, Wins Hearts

While our country is still inching towards of a culture of respecting ambulances and promptly making way for the vehicle to move, an incident in Hong Kong has set a towering example of just how it's done.

AFP

When an ambulance is alerted for an emergency, the driver has to race the vehicle within 10 minutes and the vehicle to navigate through crowds of millions may have seemed next to impossible.

But Hong Kong gave the world proof of its exceptional civic sense and made way for an ambulance in the most organised way possible.

Close to two million people hit the streets on Sunday to call on the Hong Kong government to withdraw the controversial extradition bill, according to organisers. By night, demonstrators occupied roads around government headquarters and legislature, a deja vu moment that takes us back to the 2014 pro-democracy Umbrella Movement.

Hong Kong protesters let an ambulance go through the massive protestpic.twitter.com/IN61ZnJ9fZ

¡ª Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) 16 June 2019

On Sunday, clips posted on Twitter and Facebook showed a crowd of protesters in Harcourt Road, near the Central Government Complex, moving aside in an orderly fashion.

Reports said that paramedics were called in around 9pm after a protester fainted.

As and when an ambulance appeared in the middle of the road, they made way for it without any sign of chaos or resistance. Many even compared the scene with the parting of the Red Sea, a biblical story.

So many verbs in this uniquely beautiful vid clip ??

¡ª Scott Sutton (@SSuttonSLC) 16 June 2019

For the uninitiated, people in Hong Kong are protesting against the city¡¯s handling of a controversial bill that would allow the citizens to be extradited to mainland China.

Tens of thousands of people rallied in central Hong Kong on June 16 as public anger increased following unprecedented clashes between protesters and police over the extradition law.

Hong Kong¡¯s chief executive Carrie Lam promised to ¡°indefinitely suspend¡± the bill in a bid to defuse the anger and violent clashes. However, this time the anger is when she refused to recall the bill; people are now saying that only her resignation can calm things down.

These people have shown their maturity and discipline towards co operation to save human life .

¡ª Vakil Saahab (@VSaahab) 17 June 2019

Organisers pressed ahead with the protest to demand the bill¡¯s full withdrawal, as well as to mark their anger at the way police handled a demonstration against it on Wednesday, when more than 70 people were injured by rubber bullets and tear gas, reports Reuters.

The protest is one of the largest in the city¡¯s history, and according to Reuters, the demonstrators include young families and the elderly.

A similar incident occurred when people made way for an ambulance in Kerala.

The incident took place in Chettivala near Mannarkkad, in Kerala. People were celebrating the annual festival of Mannarkkad Pooram, one of the biggest temple festivals in the region, when an ambulance tried to cross. And within minutes the crowd parted to make way for the ambulance.