2014-09-29
Pro-democracy demonstrators hold up their mobile phones during a protest near the Hong Kong government headquarters, Sept. 29, 2014.
AFP
Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET on 2014-9-29
Thousands of pro-democracy protesters continued to occupy major roads and intersections in Hong Kong as a massive civil disobedience protest entered its second night on Tuesday, calling on the territory’s chief executive C.Y. Leung to step down, and renewing calls for genuine universal suffrage.
Live drone footage streamed online by the Apply Daily newspaper showed thousands settling down for another evening of protest, in what is being dubbed Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Revolution,” with trucks bringing in supplies and some volunteers even setting up a barbecue at the heart of the city’s financial district.
Organizers handed out food and bottled water as thousands of seated protesters chanted “Leung Chun-ying, step down!” on Nathan Road in Kowloon’s shopping district of Mong Kok, after hundreds of protesters were slept out overnight on major highways in the downtown business districts of Central and Admiralty and the Causeway Bay shopping district on Hong Kong Island.
The scenes were in stark contrast to the previous night, when helmeted riot police moved in to disperse mass occupations of major highways in the city, firing pepper spray into the faces of demonstrators and raining tear gas down on defiant crowds.
“We will stay here just as long as it takes,” a protester who gave the nickname Ying told RFA’s Cantonese Service late on Monday. “We don’t know how long it will last, and it doesn’t matter how long it takes.”
A local shop-keeper surnamed Man said a certain amount of disruption was inevitable.
“But I can put up with it, because they’re not just acting in their own interests, but in the interests of society as a whole,” he said.
“It’s fine. It’s got to be done.”
But a local business owner surnamed Chow said her business had been decimated by the crowd.
“They can demonstrate if they want, but they shouldn’t stop other people from making a living,” Chow said. “The impact of this is huge; traffic has been paralysed.”
Change of mood
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Umbrellas used to shield demonstrators from pepper spray and the sun. (AFP photo)
By Monday evening local time, thousands had already descended on Connaught Road in Central, wearing black T-shirts and yellow ribbons, a somber change of mood from the white and yellow of the previous week’s student strike.
Police were still visible on the streets Monday, but many lacked full protective riot gear, and by midnight local time there was little sign that riot police stationed in alleyways and side-streets would be deployed to clear the streets.
However, racks of umbrellas were standing by on Connaught Road between Central and Admiralty for protesters to use in the event of further pepper spray attacks.
As camera drones swept across the crowds, protesters lit up the night sky with thousands of lights from individual smart-phone torches as students, office workers, teachers and social workers swelled their number further.
A large paper effigy of Leung with demonic teeth drew boos from the crowd, while protesters in Admiralty decked out an abandoned double-decker bus as a mock ancestral ‘shrine’ to Leung, complete with floral tributes and photograph.
