2014-10-13
Police officers arrest an anti-occupy protester (C) in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong, Oct. 13 2014.
AFP
Authorities in Hong Kong began moving to clear barricades blocking streets occupied by pro-democracy protesters on Monday, while a prominent student activist called on citizens to boost numbers at key protest sites following further clashes with anti-Occupy groups.
Hong Kong police said they would continue removing barricades, though, after moving to free sections of road in the Central business district and the busy Kowloon shopping district of Mong Kok.
By late Monday, thousands of protesters had gathered at the main Occupy site in Admiralty, listening to speeches and music and setting up rows of brightly colored tents on Harcourt Road for the night.
“We will not eliminate the possibility of using minimal force or arrest actions,” police senior superintendent Steve Hui told a news conference on Monday.
Earlier, police arrested three men, one for assault and two for carrying offensive weapons, after anti-Occupy groups stormed barricades in Mong Kok and Admiralty in a bid to remove obstacles to traffic.
Taxi-drivers sounded their horns in protest at the continuing occupation of major highways, which entered its third week of campaigning for public nomination of candidates in the territory’s planned one-person, one-vote elections for the chief executive in 2017.
“There were about 100-200 of them, carrying pliers and stuff like that,” an Occupy protester said after clashes broke out between both sides and police. “They were wearing masks, and they dragged away a lot of the barricades.”
“When the police saw they were carrying [potential] weapons, they went and stopped them.”
An Associated Press report said some of the group were carrying box-cutting knives, which they used to cut the plastic ties holding the barricades together.
An anti-Occupy protester defended the group’s actions, however.
“They are getting in a lot of people’s way, and we can’t use the road unless we remove the barricades,” he told RFA. “I’m not a triad member, don’t get me wrong. I’m acting on my own behalf.”
Chief executive criticized
Protesters led by the Occupy Central group, the Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS), and the academic activist group Scholarism said on Sunday that chief executive C.Y. Leung had failed to give an accurate report of public consultations on the election process to Beijing.
They want the ruling Chinese Communist Party to change its mind about an Aug. 31 ruling by its rubber stamp National People’s Congress (NPC) that limits candidates to two or three people, hand-picked by a pro-Beijing committee.
Pro-democracy politicians and protesters alike have dismissed the NPC plan as “fake universal suffrage,” because they mean a pro-democratic candidate is highly unlikely to be selected.
Demonstrators meanwhile have repeatedly called for Leung’s resignation, with students saying Leung has failed to take into account the wishes of 700,000 people who voted in an unofficial online referendum in support of public nominations.
HKFS leader Alex Chow said criminal “triad” gangs were likely behind the clashes. “Of course we condemn the violent actions against Occupy protesters,” he said.
