2014-12-15
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Causeway occupiers set up Facebook pages, hoping people will continue to support their demand for real universal suffrage in Hong Kong, Dec. 15, 2014.
RFA
Hong Kong police on Monday cleared away the third and last of the pro-democracy encampments on major roads and intersections in the semiautonomous Chinese city, as the city’s leader said the 78-day-old civil disobedience movement had come to an end.
Police arrested 20 protesters as they cleared the last remaining Occupy Central site outside a Japanese department store in the busy shopping district of Causeway Bay, dismantling barricades, makeshift shelters and clearing away banners and symbols of the “Umbrella Movement.”
“With the completion of clearance work at the occupation site in Causeway Bay, the illegal occupation that has lasted for more than two months…is over,” Chief Executive Chun-ying Leung told reporters.
He said the protests had caused “serious” economic losses and “damaged the rule of law” in the former British colony.
“If we only talk about democracy, but not about the rule of law, that’s not true democracy. It’s just anarchy,” Leung said.
Monday’s operation also saw the end of a small camp outside Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (LegCo), and brought to 955 the number of people arrested in connection with the movement, which has campaigned since late September for fully democratic elections in 2017.
The clearance of the sites went off peacefully, with protesters removing their tents and personal belongings well ahead of police deadlines, although some remained behind to be removed by police in a public show of civil disobedience.
Unhappy with response
A Causeway Bay protester in his nineties who was frequently interviewed during the protests and became widely known as Uncle Wong, said he was unhappy with Leung’s response to the protesters’ demands.
“C.Y. Leung hasn’t responded to our demands, even though hundreds of thousands of us have been sitting here for several months,” Wong told RFA as the Causeway Bay camp was cleared. “He has totally ignored us, so we still want answers from him.”
“I want to stay in jail if I can, to force him to pay for my keep.”
Pan-democratic lawmaker Chan Ka Lok was also at the scene.
“They can take action against us today, and clear us away from Causeway Bay, but that’s not the end of the dispute over political reforms,” he warned.
Many of the arrests were for “obstructing a police officer in the course of duty,” local sources said, adding that those arrested were put into police cars and taken to nearby North Point police station.
But the clearances came amid warnings from one of the original founders of the Occupy Central movement, which brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets at its height, after riot police used tear-gas, pepper spray and batons on umbrella-wielding protesters, most of whom were students.
Occupy founder Benny Tai told government broadcaster RTHK that the end of the occupation didn’t mean an end to the Umbrella Movement or the campaign for full democracy in Hong Kong.
Tai said the movement could descend into violent riots if the government continues to ignore popular demands for public nomination of candidates in the election for chief executive and more direct representation in LegCo.
According to an Aug. 31 decision by China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), all 5 million of Hong Kong’s voters will cast ballots in the 2017 poll, but may only choose between two or three candidates vetted by a Beijing-backed election committee.
