DEC. 13, 2014
People wrote messages of support on balloons in Causeway Bay after the authorities demolished a protest camp in Hong Kong on Saturday. Credit Kin Cheung/Associated Press
HONG KONG — The Hong Kong police said on Saturday that they were preparing to dismantle the last of the three pro-democracy protest camps that blocked major streets in the city for 11 weeks. The clearance of the camp, which was by far the smallest of the three, will take place on Monday, a spokesman for the police force said.
The protest camp wedged into one side of a street in Causeway Bay, a shopping area thronged by mainland Chinese tourists, has outlasted the other two, much larger camps that also sprang up in late September, voicing demands for elections free of restrictions demanded by Beijing.
But not for much longer, according to Chief Superintendent Steve Hui, a spokesman for the Hong Kong police. He told reporters that officers would remove the Causeway Bay camp on Monday morning, according to Radio Television Hong Kong, a public broadcaster.
People who refuse to leave could face arrest, said Mr. Hui. But he “stressed that if there is not conflict, the police will not use force,” the report said.
On Thursday the police dismantled the biggest protest camp, next to the city government headquarters in the Admiralty district, and in late November they cleared a camp in Mong Kok, a crowded neighborhood on the other side of Victoria Harbor.
The camp at Causeway Bay, which has always been smaller than those two sites, has shrunk to a few dozen tents. The camp has been largely free of the flare-ups of violence that occasionally erupted at the other two sites.
On Saturday, a dozen or more protesters remained at the Causeway Bay site, but they were outnumbered by tourists and passers-by taking pictures of this last surviving outcrop of the tumultuous protests.
A few dozen protesters also remain on the edge of the city legislature’s building near Admiralty. They have not blocked traffic, and the police need an invitation from legislature officials to clear the area.
