2014-10-30
A protester group holds a rally in Kowloon’s Mong Kok district, in Hong Kong, Oct. 30, 2014.
RFA
One of the main student figures at the heart of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests has denied reports that cracks are appearing in the organizers’ unity over how to keep up momentum in the five-week-old civil disobedience campaign.
Many of the students and die-hard protesters who have occupied major highways in the former British colony for nearly five consecutive weeks have vowed to remain until the government meets its demands for full universal suffrage in 2017 elections for the chief executive.
But Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper on Thursday reported “serious divisions” within the Occupy movement, with some arguing for an “early surrender” in the face of Beijing’s refusal to change an Aug. 31 ruling on electoral reform.
The concept of “surrender” apparently refers to a tactical decision by protesters to turn themselves in to the authorities at sections of highway currently under High Court injunctions.
Lester Shum, deputy head of the influential Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS), said any divisions weren’t apparent in the students’ union, however.
“There is no division within the ranks of the HKFS,” Shum told RFA’s Cantonese Service on Thursday. “No one is talking about an early surrender.”
The Ming Pao also said a meeting was planned for Sunday, to discuss the next step for the movement, which has already held talks with Hong Kong government officials without winning major concessions.
But Shum said he knew nothing of Sunday’s reported meeting.
“I haven’t been informed about it,” he said. “Because the HKFS has no intention of withdrawing [from the occupied sites].”
He said students and other leaders of the movement already hold frequent discussions about how to proceed. “But there is no timetable for wrapping the movement up so far,” Shum said.
Meanwhile, Joshua Wong, convener of the academic activism group Scholarism, issued a warning to Hong Kong’s political establishment.
“The protest movement may not ultimately bear fruit,” Wong wrote in a commentary in The New York Times. “But, if nothing else, it has delivered hope.”
“I would like to remind every member of the ruling class in Hong Kong: Today you are depriving us of our future, but the day will come when we decide your future,” Wong said.
“No matter what happens to the protest movement, we will reclaim the democracy that belongs to us,” he wrote in an article translated from Chinese.
And HKFS leader Alex Chow told government broadcaster RTHK that students are considering the possibility of traveling to Beijing for next week’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leadership summit.
Chow said “various groups” are discussing the viability of the plan, but indicated that the group hadn’t made any concrete plans to meet with officials of the ruling Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.
