2014-10-04
Pro-democracy protesters (R) protect a barricade from rival protest groups (L) in the Mongkok district of Hong Kong, Oct. 4, 2014.
AFP
Student organizers of Hong Kong’s Occupy movement on Saturday vowed to continue mass sit-ins in downtown areas unless their demands for universal suffrage are met, in spite of ongoing clashes with opponents of the week long mass pro-democracy demonstrations.
Anti-Occupy protesters tried to snatch away makeshift barricades blocking traffic and continued to face off with dozens, sometimes hundreds, of pro-democracy protesters in the busy Kowloon shopping district of Mong Kok.
Protesters remained in occupation of 2.8 kilometers (1.7 miles) of major highways in Hong Kong island’s Central district, adjacent Admiralty, and a shopping street in Causeway Bay, as well as continuing to block a busy intersection in Mong Kok, traffic police said.
Transport officials said that 225 bus routes have been affected by the protests, nearly 45 percent of all bus services throughout Hong Kong.
A large crowd of several hundred gathered in Causeway Bay amid further altercations between protesters and those who oppose them, local media reported.
The Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS) and the academic activism group Scholarism appeared to have dropped their demand for Leung’s resignation after he flatly refused to step down, instead agreeing to talks with his second-in-command on Friday.
The meeting with chief secretary Carrie Lam was later canceled by Occupy organizers in protest over the police response to attacks on pro-democracy protesters occupying Mong Kok.
Leung, meanwhile, said protesters should end their blockade of central government headquarters, as well as roads on Hong Kong island, by Monday, so government and schools can resume normal operations.
He warned protests are “very likely to keep going out of hand” if clashes between opposing protesters continued.
HKFS head Alex Chow said students still planned to support ongoing protests in Mong Kok, Admiralty and the shopping district of Causeway Bay, in spite of calls from Occupy Central co-founder Benny Tai for protesters to leave Mong Kok on Friday night.
Condemn
Chow and Scholarism leader Joshua Wong strongly condemned anti-Occupy supporters for resorting to violence in Mong Kok, and have repeatedly accused the government of allowing it to happen.
Hong Kong lawmakers on Saturday held a press conference in which they also hit out at the government and police for failing to prevent “mob violence.”
Legislators from the pan-democratic camp of parties accused the government of allowing Hong Kong’s organized crime groups, or triads, to attack demonstrators, while police did little to stop the initial violence.
Of 20 people arrested in Mong Kok late on Friday, at least eight are suspected to have triad backgrounds, government broadcaster RTHK reported.
Local media showed photos of bloodied protesters following the clashes, which follow a week of mass pro-democracy sit-ins in the former British colony.
“Hong Kong is like in Cultural Revolution in 1967, [but] now,” Frederick Fung, leader of the Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood, told reporters in a reference to communist-led riots under British colonial rule.
“The Hong Kong government is pushing Hong Kong onto the road of Cultural Revolution,” Fung said, in comments reported by the South China Morning Post.
