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Hong Kong Protest: Tens of Thousands March on New Year’s Day Hong Kong Protesters Return to Streets as New Year Begins
(about 2 hours later)
HONG KONG — Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents took to the streets on Wednesday for the city’s largest antigovernment protest in weeks, hoping to inject new momentum into a monthslong movement that has seen violent clashes and many arrests. HONG KONG — Hong Kong protesters began the new year the way they’d spent much of the old one: in the streets.
The New Year’s Day march had received official authorization, but the police withdrew their permission a few hours after it began, after clashing with demonstrators and firing tear gas and pepper spray. Hong Kong had been relatively calm since November, when voters overwhelmingly elected pro-democracy politicians to neighborhood offices — a stinging rebuke to the Chinese Communist Party, whose encroachment on the city’s liberties is at the core of the protesters’ grievances. Nearly a month of relative quiet abruptly ended on Wednesday with the sounds of protesters’ chants and police officers’ tear-gas rifles.
More than 6,000 people have been arrested since the demonstrations began in June over legislation, since scrapped, that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China. The protests have since expanded to include a broad range of demands for police accountability and greater democracy. A peaceful New Year’s Day march descended within a few hours into violent clashes. Riot officers deployed water cannons and pepper spray. Protesters built barricades out of umbrellas and paving stones, and vandalized at least two branches of a leading bank in the city, HSBC.
Here’s the latest. The trappings of the previous six months were there — the all-black dress code, the face masks and the odd Molotov cocktail. But the context of the march on Wednesday was decidedly different.
A New Year’s Day march is organized annually by Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp. In light of the crisis currently facing the city, and a population that is the most politically engaged in a generation, many expected this year’s event to be bigger than usual. While as many as a million people had attended the first of this movement’s antigovernment protests in June, only tens of thousands were out on Wednesday. The tone then was one of righteous anger; now, it was more like doubt.
The march began just before 3 p.m. along a two-mile route approved by the police. The protest route passed some of the city’s most iconic landmarks and buildings, stretching from Victoria Park to the Central business district. “The government is not willing to back down at this moment,” said Grace Ng, 30, a public relations professional who has attended half a dozen marches since the protests began. “I want the government to compromise, but I think there isn’t enough international attention at the moment to make them bow down to the people.”
“We must walk shoulder to shoulder and not forget our original intentions,” Jimmy Sham, leader of the Civil Human Rights Front, which organized the march, said at a rally. “We won’t forget all of those who have been suppressed, and we won’t give up on them. As the movement enters its seventh month, its momentum is in question. It remains to be seen if the protesters have the stamina, public support or inclination to continue to battle the government, which has repeatedly said it will not concede to their demands for greater democracy.
The protesters, many of them wearing masks and clad in black, poured into the park and surrounding streets. Some said they were unsure how the movement would continue in the face of a government that was unwilling to compromise. It is also unclear how long the city itself can endure a movement that has already resulted in 6,000 arrests and an economic recession.
“Nobody knows what this movement will eventually achieve, but most people are just doing what they can. If nobody comes out, then it would be the end of Hong Kong and all the beautiful things we are familiar with,” said Grace Ng, 30, who works in public relations. “I believe a lot of us have no idea what to do next,” said Jessica Man, 19, a university student. “I don’t know what we could do to keep ourselves going.”
The themes of Wednesday’s march include forming unions, to prepare for possible strikes; opposing salary increases for the police, who have been accused of a brutal response to the protests; and ending a perceived government crackdown on activists, especially educators. At the heart of the protests is concern about the erosion of civil liberties in Hong Kong, a former colony that was promised a unique set of freedoms when Britain handed it back to China in 1997. Those fears have been compounded by economic issues, including soaring housing prices, income inequality and a dearth of high-paying jobs.
On Wednesday, marchers donated money at a booth set up by Spark Alliance, a fund that has raised millions of dollars to provide legal support and other kinds of aid to protesters. The donations were in defiance of a police operation last month in which four people were arrested on suspicion of money laundering in connection with the fund, and $9 million in assets were frozen. In November, Hong Kong expressed its support for the protests at the polls, overwhelmingly electing pro-democracy politicians to neighborhood offices. It was a stinging rebuke to Communist Party officials in China, and it ushered in the longest period of relative calm since the protests began.
In the Wan Chai district, protesters vandalized a branch of HSBC, which has been a target of their ire since the bank closed Spark Alliance’s account in November. The police made arrests and used pepper spray to disperse the crowd. Officers fired tear gas in Wan Chai later in the afternoon, and some demonstrators built roadblocks and threw Molotov cocktails. Wednesday’s march was the second large-scale demonstration that the police had authorized since the election. But hours after it began, the police rescinded their permission, citing an outbreak of violence and vandalism.
By sunset, the police had withdrawn their permission to hold the march and ordered demonstrators to disperse, even though large crowds of latecomers were still at the march’s starting point, hours after the demonstration began. Jimmy Sham, a leader of the Civil Human Rights Front, which organized the march, tried to fire up the crowd before it began.
Newly formed labor unions, including ones for workers in the hotel, construction and insurance industries, recruited members at the march in hopes of preparing for future strikes. “We must walk shoulder to shoulder and not forget our original intentions,” he said at a rally.
“Join a union and resist tyranny!” protesters chanted ahead of the march. The movement’s original intentions are no longer a motivating factor. The protests began over legislation, long since scrapped, that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China, where the courts are opaque and subordinate to the Communist Party. The protesters have since expanded their demands to include a broad range of grievances, including greater democracy and an investigation of alleged police brutality.
Activists have also rallied against what they fear will be a clampdown on schools since Hong Kong’s secretary for education, Kevin Yeung, told the mainland Chinese news media last week that the government could fire school principals if they failed to cooperate with the authorities, or if they supported teachers believed to have links to the protests. The march on Wednesday stretched the movement’s scope further, calling on people to join labor unions with an eye toward future strikes, and to resist a feared crackdown on Hong Kong educators who have links to the movement.
“This is taking away the freedom of speech of teachers and it is an impediment on their freedom to teach as they see fit,” Fung Wai-wah, president of the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union, said at his group’s station along the march. “We find this absolutely unacceptable.” Many marchers gave money at a booth set up by Spark Alliance, a fund that has raised millions of dollars to provide legal support and other kinds of aid to protesters. The donations were in defiance of a police operation last month, in which four people were arrested on suspicion of money laundering and $9 million of the fund’s assets were frozen.
Mr. Yeung said the education department had received 123 complaints about teachers in connection with the protests, with some of them accused of “provocative behavior” or using “inappropriate teaching materials.” On Wednesday, at least five people were detained for vandalizing a glass door and ATMs at a branch of HSBC, which had shut down Spark Alliance’s account. Banks and businesses that are perceived to have links to mainland China or the Hong Kong government have been targeted for vandalism or boycotts by some protesters.
The police said in December that nearly 40 percent of those arrested in the protests had been students, calling it a “worrying” trend. One witness, Kan Cheng, said she saw as many as nine undercover police officers beating two young people near the bank’s broken door.
On New Year’s Eve, Carrie Lam, the city’s embattled chief executive, addressed the territory and called for calm ahead of the protest. “I saw a protester being beaten and she hadn’t done anything at all,” said Ms. Cheng, 60. “She hadn’t vandalized at all.”
“Let’s start 2020 with a new resolution, to restore order and harmony in society. So we can begin again, together,” Mrs. Lam said in a three-minute video message that included other officials. For the city’s leadership, the protests are the biggest political crisis since the handover from Britain. Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, has struggled to deal with the unrest while also satisfying her superiors in Beijing.
On New Year’s Eve, Mrs. Lam addressed the territory and called for calm ahead of the protest. “Let’s start 2020 with a new resolution, to restore order and harmony in society. So we can begin again, together,” she said in a video message.
“We must handle the problems at hand and acknowledge the shortcomings in our systems as well as the deep-rooted problems and conflicts that have been accumulating for many years in our society,” she said.“We must handle the problems at hand and acknowledge the shortcomings in our systems as well as the deep-rooted problems and conflicts that have been accumulating for many years in our society,” she said.
Mrs. Lam, who introduced and eventually withdrew the extradition bill that sparked the protests — and whose resignation the protesters have demanded — has promised to address social and economic issues that she says underlie the unrest. Mrs. Lam, who introduced and eventually withdrew the extradition bill that sparked the protests, has promised to address social and economic issues that she says underlie the unrest. But the government said Wednesday in a statement that “the top priority now is to stop violence and restore social order as soon as possible so that the daily lives of people and various business activities can return to the normal track.”
But her government said Wednesday in a statement that “the top priority now is to stop violence and restore social order as soon as possible so that the daily lives of people and various business activities can return to the normal track.” It is a message that’s been echoed in Beijing. China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, who has permitted a degree of public protest in Hong Kong that is unheard of on the mainland, mentioned the protests in his New Year’s Day address, saying that “Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability is the wish of Hong Kong compatriots and the expectation for the people of the motherland.”
Ezra Cheung and Jamie Tarabay contributed reporting. Ezra Cheung, Katherine Li and Jamie Tarabay contributed reporting from Hong Kong, and Chris Buckley from Beijing.