DEC. 14, 2014
HONG KONG — Pro-democracy protests that swept onto the streets of Hong Kong 11 weeks ago faced a muted ending on Monday, when the police prepared to dismantle the last remaining road occupation, and a prominent student activist, Joshua Wong, was due to appear in court. But the city still faced aftershocks from the months of political strife.
After almost three months of tumult, the street protests have dwindled to a few dozen tents in the Causeway Bay area, a hectic shopping district, where dozens of protesters waited to be evicted, accompanied by similar numbers of journalists. Before the police moved in, most of the remaining protesters were packing away their tents and sleeping bags on a road of shops and malls festooned with Christmas decorations. Many said the police were unlikely to encounter any forceful resistance.
“Of course, it feels sad,” said Leo Chan, 24, a waiter who was rolling up his tent.
“There’s no way we can feel satisfied. We didn’t achieve anything,” he added. “But it’s not the end. It’s essential for the protest forces to continue.”
The camp at Causeway Bay was by far the smallest, and the least volatile, of the street occupations that sprang up across Hong Kong on Sept. 28. That day the police’s use of tear gas and pepper spray to disperse student protesters around the city government headquarters backfired, and tens of thousands of people took to the streets in anger, also demanding that the government heed their calls for democratic voting rights.
On Sunday night, the small protest area overflowed with people making a last visit to the last street camp before it disappeared. Hundreds lined up to have T-shirts and bags stenciled with slogans and images from the democracy movement.
“We achieved something,” said Teresa Liu, a student who said she had regularly stayed at the camp since Sept. 29. “We achieved international notice, and since we got notice, China has no excuse to hide anymore.”
But the Hong Kong government gave no substantial concessions, and the protest movement increasingly succumbed to exhaustion and internal fractures. On Thursday, the police demolished the biggest camp, in the Admiralty district, and in late November they pulled down the camp in Mong Kok, a crowded neighborhood where protesters seeking to defend and win back their space on the streets had repeatedly clashed with the police.
