SEPT. 26, 2014
HONG KONG — Student protests demanding democratic elections in Hong Kong ended in rowdy confrontation and arrests on Friday, when the police moved in with pepper spray against demonstrators who had stormed a square near the government headquarters.
The strife was a taste of what could follow a planned sit-in protest in Hong Kong’s main financial district, which a leader of the city’s democracy movement said was likely to take place next week.
Overnight and into Saturday morning, the confrontation spilled onto the streets around the government offices. Hundreds of young protesters faced phalanxes of police officers with shields whose warnings to disperse went unheeded.
The nighttime standoff between hundreds of demonstrators and the well-prepared police force came at the end of a week of peaceful student protests over Beijing’s limited proposals for electoral change, released last month.
Pro-democracy groups and parties have said the Chinese government’s proposals betrayed promises that starting in 2017, Hong Kong’s leader, or chief executive, would be chosen by all voters, instead of the 1,200-member committee of elites loyal to Beijing that chooses the leader now.
In Hong Kong, anger with the Chinese government runs especially deep among people in their 30s and younger. This week, thousands of university students boycotted classes and attended assemblies to voice their complaints, and on Friday hundreds of high school students also abandoned classes for a day of protest near the government and legislative headquarters.
Quite a few said they had come to a daytime rally despite parental disapproval.
“My mom supports me, but my dad opposed me,” said Oscar Mo Hau-chuk, a slight teenage boy at the protest, where the police gently herded the students behind barriers. “I told him this government is dark, is wrong, because it doesn’t listen.”
