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Hong Kong Democracy Leader Says Limits Harm Rest of China
Pro-Democracy Students Are Arrested in Hong Kong
(about 5 hours later)
HONG KONG — A leader of Hong Kong’s democracy movement warned on Friday that extinguishing hopes for free elections in the city would undercut prospects for political liberalization across all of China, while another said protesters were likely to attempt a sit-in in the city’s financial heart next week.
HONG KONG — Student protests demanding democratic elections in Hong Kong ended in rowdy confrontation and arrests on Friday, when the police moved in with pepper spray against demonstrators who had stormed a square near the government headquarters. The strife was a taste of what could follow a planned sit-in protest in Hong Kong’s main financial district, which a leader of the city’s democracy movement said was likely to take place next week.
In a further sign of rising tensions, about a hundred protesters swarmed a square in central Hong Kong as the police struggled to prevent others from following. Several student demonstrators were arrested, protest organizers said.
Late into the night, the confrontation spilled onto the streets around the government offices. Hundreds of young protesters, some with clear plastic sheets over their eyes to ward off pepper spray, held off phalanxes of police officers with shields whose warnings to disperse went unheeded.
The two co-founders of Occupy Central With Love and Peace — the movement that has led demands to choose Hong Kong’s leader through democratic elections — issued the warnings after a week of student protests that were prompted by Beijing’s limited proposals for electoral change. But the Occupy Central leaders and other democracy advocates said the increasingly hard-line Chinese Communist Party under President Xi Jinping appeared set against offering any real concessions.
The nighttime standoff between hundreds of demonstrators and the well-prepared police force came at the end of a week of peaceful student protests over Beijing’s limited proposals for electoral change, released last month. Pro-democracy groups and parties have said the Chinese government’s proposals betrayed promises that starting in 2017, Hong Kong’s leader, or chief executive, would be chosen by all voters, instead of the 1,200-member committee of elites loyal to Beijing that chooses the leader now.
Beijing’s proposals were released last month.
In Hong Kong, anger with the Chinese government runs especially deep among people in their 30s and younger. This week, thousands of university students boycotted classes and attended assemblies to voice their complaints, and on Friday hundreds of high school students also abandoned classes for a day of protest near the government and legislative headquarters.
Chan Kin-man, an Occupy Central co-founder, said the group was nonetheless committed to peacefully “occupying” part of Hong Kong’s main financial district, called Central. He said the protest would probably take place on Wednesday, China’s National Day holiday, which is also a public holiday in Hong Kong. Until now, the group has been coy about its plans for that day.
Quite a few said they had come to a daytime rally despite parental disapproval.
“I’m quite sure that we will occupy, and very likely on that day, but I can’t say for sure,” Mr. Chan, director of the Center for Civil Society Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in an interview. He said Occupy Central would announce its plans on Sunday, after more discussions and preparations.
“I don’t see any room for compromise, really,” he said. “We have to rely on a vibrant civil society that protects us, instead of expecting any meaningful change in the institutions, at least in the short run.”
The confrontation in the square on Friday followed a series of speeches by protest leaders. Some of those in attendance broke past guards to enter the square, near the Hong Kong government headquarters, and the police scrambled to surround them and stop others from entering. Several members of the university student federation were arrested, said Yvonne Leung, president of the Hong Kong University Students’ Union.
Despite adopting a name that invokes the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began in 2011 with protests against economic inequality, the Hong Kong movement has focused on electoral demands and many of its supporters are middle class, with a few from the city’s financial elite.
After Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, it kept an independent judiciary and the relatively robust protections for free speech that had developed under British colonial rule. But the city’s leader, or chief executive, is chosen through an Election Committee with 1,200 members, many of them business figures, bankers, traders and professionals loyal to Beijing.
Occupy Central and other pro-democracy groups and parties in Hong Kong have said the Chinese government’s election proposals are a betrayal of promises that, starting in 2017, Hong Kong’s chief executive would be chosen by all voters.
The Chinese plan would engineer outcomes favored by Beijing, they have said, making any popular vote an empty ritual.
Aspiring candidates would need to win approval from at least half the members of a nominating committee, which, like the current Election Committee, would be dominated by groups beholden to Beijing. And only two or three candidates would be allowed to run.
At a news conference, Benny Tai, another co-founder of Occupy Central, argued that China’s long-term viability depended on letting the city become a laboratory for full-fledged democracy.
If China’s leaders were “farsighted enough,” Mr. Tai said, they would “see that they will have to think seriously about political reform in China, and this reform may involve a certain kind of electoral reform.”
“Throughout the whole of China, where will be the best place to have this pilot test of electoral reform?” he said. “I cannot think of any other place except Hong Kong.”
In Hong Kong, anger with the Chinese government runs especially deep among people in their 30s and younger. This week, thousands of university students boycotted classes and attended assemblies to voice their demands, and on Friday hundreds of high-school students also abandoned classes for a day of protest.
At a rally outside the Hong Kong Legislative Council building, hundreds of the students sat on the ground in orderly rows, some in their school uniforms, some doing homework while they heard speeches from supporters. Quite a few said they had come despite parental disapproval.
“My mom supports me, but my dad opposed me,” said Oscar Mo Hau-chuk, a slight teenage boy at the protest, where the police gently herded the students behind barriers. “I told him this government is dark, is wrong, because it doesn’t listen.”
“My mom supports me, but my dad opposed me,” said Oscar Mo Hau-chuk, a slight teenage boy at the protest, where the police gently herded the students behind barriers. “I told him this government is dark, is wrong, because it doesn’t listen.”
He and other students said only a few of their classmates attended, while most students went to school as usual. “They also support us but were not allowed to come by their parents,” said Jodie Lam, an 18-year-old who was doing math homework while she sat with two classmates.
As the crowd swelled in the evening, Joshua Wong, 17, a leader of a youth protest group, Scholarism, who recently graduated from high school, said the protesters seemed to be getting younger.
Joshua Wong, 17, a leader of the youth protest group Scholarism who recently graduated from high school, said protesters seemed to be getting younger.
“I thought I was young when I protested against national education at the age of 15,” he told a crowd of thousands, referring to protests in 2011-12 against proposed school curriculum changes that critics said were a vehicle for indoctrination. “Then I saw a 12-year-old today.”
“I thought I was young when I protested against national education at the age of 15,” he told a crowd of thousands in the evening, referring to protests in 2011-12 against proposed school curriculum changes that critics said were a vehicle for indoctrination. “Then I saw a 12-year-old today.”
“I do not want to see, 10 years later, primary school students out there still protesting for democracy,” Mr. Wong said.
“I do not want to see, 10 years later, primary school students out there still protesting for democracy,” said Mr. Wong.
After the speeches ended, about a hundred protesters broke away and swarmed the nearby Civic Square, next to the government headquarters, as the police struggled to stop others from pouring in and used pepper spray against some in the surging crowd.
He was also arrested during the sweep into the square. The planned sit-in is likely to involve similar scenes on a bigger scale.
Other protesters on the square were surrounded by a ring of police officers, who warned that none would be allowed to leave. Some of the protesters on the square were arrested, said Yvonne Leung, the president of the student union of the University of Hong Kong. Mr. Wong was among them.
Mr. Tai, an associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, said the civil disobedience would continue well after the Occupy Central movement ended. One idea is to hold an informal vote to elect a “shadow” chief executive. The democracy advocates held a referendum in June that presented residents with rival plans for changing the election system, and it attracted 787,000 votes, equal to more than one-fifth of the city’s electorate.
Jon Ho, 22, a graduate student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said he and others had tried to stop the police from retaking the square. He said he had been pepper-sprayed twice.
“It is a kind of parallel government we can run,” said Mr. Tai, referring to the idea of an unofficial chief executive. “Now, surely we are not running the actual society, but we are putting checks on the government.”
“The Chinese Parliament doesn’t give power to the people, and so we have a government that represents only the powerful and the rich, like developers, instead of average people,” he said.
The financial heart of Hong Kong, known as Central, could be the scene of similar but bigger confrontations next week, when Occupy Central, the main group opposing the Chinese government’s package of election changes, plans an extended sit-in. Chan Kin-man, a co-founder of Occupy Central, said the protest would probably start on Wednesday, China’s National Day holiday, which is also a public holiday in Hong Kong. Until now, the group has been coy about its plans for that day.
Mr. Chan, a director of the Center for Civil Society Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the sit-in was meant to encourage democratic commitment in the city rather than quickly change the minds of China’s leaders. He said Occupy Central would announce its plans on Sunday.
Emily Lau, a member of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council who supports Occupy Central’s planned protest, said: “I think that many Hong Kong people are quite determined that any protest action should be peaceful and orderly. We have a very solid track record of mounting huge demonstrations, which were all very peaceful and orderly, and I don’t think we’re going to change that now.”
