NOV. 17, 2014
Police officers near a barricade set up by pro-democracy protesters in the Mong Kok district of Hong Kong on Monday. Credit Xaume Olleros/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
HONG KONG — The Hong Kong government prepared Monday to push back against pro-democracy demonstrators for the first time in weeks, warning that the police may clear an area in the center of the city that protesters have made into a base.
The government said police officers were ready to help court bailiffs enforce an injunction ordering people to stop congregating around the Citic Tower in Admiralty, a neighborhood near government headquarters that for more than 50 days has become a street camp for thousands of protesters, some living in tents.
“Police are ready to give the fullest support to the bailiffs to execute the court order” on Tuesday, a government statement said. “If anyone obstructs or violently charges the bailiffs when they are executing their duties, police will take resolute action.”
A police response would mark the first attempt by the Hong Kong government in a month to shrink the barricaded camps that protesters have built in an effort to force the authorities and Chinese Communist Party leaders to heed their demands.
But protesters and the government have said that any clearing operation would be just one move in a politically fraught endgame that is far from over. The court injunction applies to only a part of one of three areas seized in late September by protesters demanding open democratic elections for Hong Kong’s leader.
Acting on a complaint from the building’s owner, a Hong Kong court issued an injunction in November against blocking traffic to the Citic Tower, an office and retail building across the street from the government headquarters on the south side of Victoria Harbor. The court has issued a similar injunction for a street in Mong Kok, another protest site on the north side of the harbor that is usually thronged by Chinese tourists, after a taxi drivers’ association and a minibus company brought complaints. The government warned that anyone obstructing the police could be culpable of “criminal contempt of court.”
“Police urge the illegal road occupiers to obey the court order, remove obstacles and personal belongings, and stop the illegal occupation soonest,” said the statement. It did not say when the police might try to enforce the injunction in Mong Kok, an area where rowdy protests have sometimes flared into violent clashes and arrests.
A person involved in the Hong Kong government’s decision said the police would not rush to clear completely the three occupied areas, although the closure of major avenues had caused traffic jams and hurt sales in stores. The person insisted on anonymity, because he was not authorized to speak openly about the matter.
“The government is in no hurry to end the whole thing because public opinion is growing on our side,” he said. “It will be guerrilla warfare — we will clear it, they will regroup, we will clear it again, they will regroup, but eventually, they will dissipate.”
