2014-12-30
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A worker cleans up the Occupy Central camp outside the Legislative Council in Hong Kong, Dec. 12, 2014.
RFA
Hong Kong authorities have mobilized thousands of police ahead of planned celebrations over the New Year, in a bid to stave off a new phase of the Occupy Central pro-democracy movement, which ended earlier this month after police cleared protesters from three main encampments in the semi-autonomous Chinese city.
Police are expecting some 380,000 people to turn out for mass celebrations on Wednesday, as crowds gather to usher in 2015, and are hoping to forestall “walkabout” style democracy protests which have taken the place of the occupation sites in recent weeks.
Some 6,000 officers are being deployed to seal off certain sections of roadway in a bid to prevent a new occupation, police spokesman Kong Man-keung told reporters on Tuesday.
Rights groups said they have been compiling reports from members of the public detailing complaints about police abuse of their powers in the wake of the forceful clearance of the Occupy site on Kowloon’s Nathan Road, during which riot police used pepper spray and batons to disperse remaining protesters.
“We have a database, and we are calling on the public to send their reports to us, and then we can analyze the data we have collected,” Civil Human Rights Front convenor Daisy Chan told RFA.
“Then we will publish [our analysis], which should be helpful for citizens making complaints [against police] or anyone engaged in legal work,” she said.
A handful of occupiers have remained on a side-street not far from the former British colony’s Legislative Council (LegCo) for the past two week, with numbers peaking at several hundred.
More than 120 tents and awnings were clustered along a walkway on Tim Mei street not far from government headquarters in Hong Kong’s Admiralty district.
“To begin with, there were just five or six tents and awnings, but now there are many times that number, even though it’s a very small area,” one occupier surnamed Lam told RFA on Tuesday.
“We are all squashed together, and we intend to remain, for tonight at the very least,” she said. “They government is treating us as rough-sleepers, but we have told them we will be staying.”
But she said the occupiers could still take to the streets in a renewed bid for full democracy in the 2017 election for the next chief executive.
“When it comes to the welfare of the people, then it’s politics that has to change,” Lam said.
