The renewed protests against Chinese mainland traders are becoming increasingly unpopular in Hong Kong after the latest protest on Sunday turned violent and affected several busy districts in the New Territories and Kowloon.

Footage and reports of a local elderly person being kicked by protesters and a mother and daughter being verbally bullied during the Sunday protest have went viral online and have drawn wide criticism. With the young girl crying, the angry mother opened her trolley case to prove she was not a parallel-goods trader who buys cheap goods from Hong Kong to resell in the mainland.

Legislators from both conservative and pan-democratic parties have condemned the violent behavior arising from the protests.

Lai Tung-kwok, Hong Kong's Secretary for Security, on Monday described the anti-mainland trader protesters as "thugs" and condemned them as protesters who "insult and kick pedestrians, inspect visitors' luggage, and disrupt traffic." They have abused their freedom of speech and offended the rule of law, he said.

Hundreds participated in the protest Sunday. They confronted both local residents and mainland visitors and many shops were forced to close. Traffic was also disrupted as protesters blocked a cross-border bus route to Shenzhen.

At least six were arrested.

The Sunday protest was the fourth anti-mainland traders protest since February.

"Their acts are no longer normal protests; they have crossed the line tolerable for a civil society," Hong Kong-based newspaper Oriental Daily News wrote in an editorial Tuesday.

A member from Civic Passion, a radical group that had organized pervious protests and took part in the Sunday demonstrations, stressed that their original purpose was to pressure the government on the policy of multi-entry visit permits for mainland tourists.

However, mainland tourists are angry over the radical moves of the protesters.

"I came to buy shoes and rice for my own use, I'm a normal consumer who contributed to Hong Kong's economy," a tourist, who was not named, told China Radio International on Tuesday. "Hong Kong is a place with the rule of law, but this [violence] is not what I had expected."

Yin Hongbiao, a professor of international relations at Peking University, said the indiscriminate attacks on parallel-goods traders have created a bad trend in Hong Kong.

"The parallel-goods trade is deplorable, as it hurts both the Hong Kong market and the mainland market, but people from both sides are involved in such trafficking, and it is unfair for the radicals to place all the blame on mainlanders," Yin told the Global Times.

Zhang Mao, head of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, told the media on Monday that the government has been cracking down on such acts.