Shawdesh Desk: Hundreds of Hong Kong university and school students swapped classes for democracy demonstrations on Monday, the latest act of defiance in an anti-government movement that has plunged the Chinese-ruled city into its biggest political crisis in decades.

The boycott follows a weekend marred by some of the worst violence since unrest escalated more than three months ago, with protesters burning barricades and throwing petrol bombs, and police retaliating with water cannon, tear gas and batons.

Riot police on Monday patrolled the subway, known as the MTR, where some of the most violent clashes have erupted.

Hundreds of students gathered outside the Chinese University of Hong Kong, one of the city’s largest, taking turns to make speeches from a stage with a black backdrop embossed with ‘Students in Unity Boycott for our City’.

‘I come here just to tell others that even after summer holidays end we are not back to our normal life, we should continue to fight for Hong Kong,’ said one 19-year old student who asked to be identified as just Chan.

‘These protests awaken me to care more about the society and care for the voiceless.’

Images posted on social media showed rows of teenagers lined up outside secondary schools holding banners. Many primary schools were closed because of a typhoon warning. Monday was the first day back after summer holidays.

After leaving the airport on Sunday, some demonstrators targeted the MTR subway station in nearby Tung Chung district, ripping out turnstiles and smashing CCTV cameras and lamps with metal poles. Police moved in and made several arrests.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, a lightning rod for protesters’ anger at a city government they say is controlled by Beijing, said on her Facebook page on Monday that 10 subway stations were damaged by ‘violent offenders’.

Lam has said the government would consider using all laws at its disposal to bring unrest to an end.

Meanwhile, rape threats, body-shaming and doctored photos: women supporting the anti-government protests in Hong Kong say they are being harassed online by suspected pro-Beijing trolls.

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have taken to the financial hub’s streets week after week in the biggest challenge to China’s rule of the semi-autonomous city for decades.

But female protesters posting support for the pro-democracy movement said they have experienced a slew of sexist online attacks in response.

‘They are not attacking my views or anything, they just attack me because I am female,’ said Hong Kong student Mickey Leung Ho Wun.

The 17-year-old discovered a doctored picture of her at a pro-democracy rally was being spread on Facebook via a page supporting the city’s police.

In the original, Wun is standing next to a banner reading ‘I am a secondary school student’ but in the altered version, the sign reads ‘I am not wearing any underwear.’

‘These are Hong Kong people who are pro-Beijing,’ Wun speculated of the users sharing the picture.

Another young female protester, Ka Yau Ho, said a photograph shared online of her being detained by the police during a rally was altered so it appeared her nipples were showing.

Celebrity Hong Kong singer turned activist Denise Ho said on Facebook the aim of the online attacks against her was to ‘ignore her will, ignore her vision, focus on her exterior and dress, and then demonise.’

These women said they suspected pro-Beijing trolls were behind the sexist abuse, as the majority of messages were in simplified Chinese — predominantly used in mainland China.

They added that the abuse has intensified since Beijing ramped up its hardline rhetoric over the protests.

On Wednesday evening, thousands rallied against alleged police sexual violence, holding aloft purple lights in solidarity with abuse victims.

Attendees shared the #ProtestToo hashtag, a play on 2017’s global #MeToo movement that exposed sexual assault and harassment in high-profile industries — and helped improve attitudes towards abuse survivors.

But women at the protest told AFP they had stopped posting online as the rhetoric against the protesters increased.

A spokesperson for Hong Kong’s Association Concerning Sexual Violence against Women said online harassment was ‘a weapon to harm women,’ adding that it was linked to outdated social norms and cultural values.

Social media has been a key battleground for both sides during the protests.

Earlier this month tech giants Twitter and Facebook said they had suspended nearly 1,000 active accounts emanating from China, aimed at undercutting the legitimacy of the Hong Kong protest movement.

Twitter said it had shut down a further 200,000 accounts before they could inflict any damage.

Laurel Chor, 29, said as a female reporter covering the protests in Hong Kong she had received a ‘constant barrage’ of abuse in her comments and Instagram DMs.

‘They were using words like whore or prostitute and bitch,’ she said.

A Twitter post which called on people to shun a list of female Asian journalists — including Chor — was indicative of how ‘women do get disproportionately targeted and it is not only gendered but also racial,’ she said.

Similarly, journalist Vicky Xiuzhong Xu, born in mainland China but writing about the protests from Australia, said her Twitter account was swamped by negative comments, including rape threats.

‘The insults that were towards me they were a really weird combination of nasty nationalism, sexism, and racism,’ she said. ‘I felt physically sick.’

It is not only pro-democracy demonstrators who have endured abusive gendered attacks.

Photographs of Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, have been superimposed onto scantily-clad models’ bodies and pasted on walls in the city.

Meanwhile, the wives of a number of serving police officers were identified by Telegram users who created a poll on the encrypted messaging service to vote on which wife they would rather ‘sleep with’, a senior police source said.

A Twitter spokesperson told AFP that ‘abuse, harassment and hateful conduct have no place on our service’.

Neither Instagram nor Facebook immediately responded to comment but Instagram confirmed they were actively investigating the issue.