2014-12-03
(L-R) Occupy Central organizers Chu Yiu-ming, Benny Tai and Chan Kin-man along with former bishop of Hong Kong Joseph Zen leave a police station in Hong Kong, Dec. 3, 2014.
AFP
Three organizers of Hong Kong’s Occupy Central nonviolent, pro-democracy movement were not arrested when they surrendered themselves to police on Wednesday in a bid to end street protests that have shut down parts of the semi-autonomous city for more than two months.
Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP) founders professors Benny Tai Yiu-ting and Chan Kin-man and pastor Chu Yiu-ming symbolically turned themselves in for “participating in an unauthorized assembly” to protest Beijing’s refusal to allow a free vote for electing Hong Kong’s next leader in 2017.
“I heard very clearly from the police that we have not been arrested, so we are allowed to leave without restriction,” Tai told the media outside the police station. “They handled our cases quite fast.”
He also said he did not know if the trio would be prosecuted for other or additional offenses and that police indicated they would notify them if they wanted them to return to the station.
Former Hong Kong bishop Joseph Zen and dozens of supporters also turned themselves in.
“I took part in the campaign to express my disappointment with the government,” a protestor surnamed Chen who was waiting to surrender outside the police station told RFA. “But because the occupy action was so unlawful, I’m surrendering today. But the protest was the only way we could express our anger.”
The occupy movement was “the most peaceful way to fight for universal suffrage,” Chen said.
“Now the surrender will wake up more people to fight for real democracy,” he said.
Another protestor who wanted to surrender to police, but did not give his name, told RFA: “I feel I have a duty to go to the court to make our positions even clearer to all—why Hong Kong people deserve the civil rights and true universal suffrage they want.”
A social worker who only gave his name as Kenneth and was outside the police station to support Tai and the others told RFA: “Civilian disobedience has come to this moment and the last step—to surrender to the police so as to take responsibility.
That’s why I came here. I think we should move our battlefield to other areas, including writing down the [movement’s] work to let many people know and understand [it].”
Wu Yisan, A Hong Kong-based commentator said both the Beijing and Hong Kong governments were the big losers in the protest.
“Students and citizens in Hong Kong held out for more than two months of peaceful protests, which greatly impacted the world. [But] the Beijing and Hong Kong governments clumsily handled the umbrella movement. They lost.”
US diplomat’s call
In the meantime, a top U.S. diplomat for Asia called on China to ensure that multiple candidates would be allowed to run freely in the 2017 elections in Hong Kong.
