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Hong Kong Protesters Call Off Talks With Government After Clashes

Hong Kong Protesters Call Off Talks With Government After Clashes

Hong Kong (AFP) – Hong Kong student leaders Friday called off talks with the government aimed at bringing an end to mass pro-democracy demonstrations that have paralyzed the city, after violent clashes broke out with pro-Beijing crowds at their protest camps.

The Hong Kong Federation of Students made the announcement after pro-government crowds descended on two of their camps on Friday, tearing down their tents and barricades in what activists said was orchestrated violence by paid thugs from “triad” criminal gangs.

“There is no other option but to call off talks,” the students said in a statement.

“Everybody saw what happened today,” they added. “The government and police turned a blind eye to violent acts by the triads targeting peaceful Occupy protesters”.

The embattled government of Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying had promised talks in a bid to end the protests that have brought swathes of the semi-autonomous Chinese city to a standstill since Sunday, with tens of thousands of people filling major highways demanding Beijing grant them free elections.

There were angry scenes in the packed Mong Kok and Causeway Bay shopping districts as pro-democracy protesters faced off with large crowds of opponents, with police struggling to keep the situation under control.

Police said there had been two arrests and defended their response to the chaotic scenes, with senior superintendent Kong Man-keung telling reporters the force had “deployed a lot of manpower to control the situation”.

Protesters reacted angrily to the lack of arrests, saying pro-Beijing thugs had been freely allowed to attack their camps. The crowds in Mong Kok chanted “Bring out the handcuffs!” late into the night.

Police officers were seen escorting a man from the scene with his faced covered in blood.

There were widespread allegations of sexual assault in the densely-packed crowds, with three girls wearing plastic rain ponchos seen being bundled into a police van in tears after apparently being assaulted at the Causeway Bay protest.

“I urgently want to express to all citizens, no matter what attitude you have towards Occupy, you still have to remain calm, and not use violence or disrupt order under any situation,” Leung said in a televised message.

While the United States, Europe and Japan have all expressed their concern at the scenes playing out in the key Asian financial hub, China’s Communist authorities insisted there is “no room to make concessions on important principles”.

The protesters have massed on the streets in fury at China’s announcement in August that while Hong Kongers can vote for their next leader in 2017, only candidates vetted by Beijing will be able to stand — a decision dismissed as “fake democracy” by campaigners.

Demonstrators had set a midnight Thursday ultimatum for Leung to resign and for Beijing to abandon the proposals to vet candidates.

Leung — seen by the protesters as a Beijing stooge — refused to quit, but in a dramatic televised appearance shortly before the midnight deadline he appointed his deputy to sit down with a prominent students’ group that has been at the vanguard of the protests.

Mistrust was rife that Leung was merely trying to buy time in the hope that Hong Kong’s residents will tire of the disruption caused by the mass sit-ins.

Friday’s clashes broke out as the city returned to work after a two-day public holiday.

“I don’t support Occupy Central. We have to work and make money. Occupy is just a game,” said a construction worker who gave his name as Mr Lee.

“Give us Mong Kok back, we Hong Kongers need to eat!” yelled another man removing the barricades there.

Individuals from both sides pushed and shoved each other as water bottles were thrown, and one anti-Occupy protester chanted: “Beat them to death, good job police!”

Store owners have told of a massive downturn in business after days of demonstrations.

“I supported (the pro-democracy activists) at first but when they escalated their action, they have gone too far,” said Janice Lam, 54, an onlooker in Causeway Bay.

Hong Kong Finance Secretary John Tsang warned that if the unrest persists, the city’s status as one of the world’s most important trading hubs could be under threat.

“If this situation were to persist we’re going to see some damage to our system,” he told a press conference.

He added that extended protests could seriously dent “confidence in the market system in Hong Kong — that would bring permanent damage that we could not afford”.

AFP Photo/Anthony Wallace

Hong Kong Activists Push Democracy Through Polling

Hong Kong Activists Push Democracy Through Polling

By Stuart Leavenworth, McClatchy Foreign Staff

BEIJING — Hong Kong’s 3.5 million registered voters are making a statement that they want ballot choices in 2017. China’s Communist Party is making a statement it wants to control those choices.

Those entrenched positions are clashing this week as Hong Kong democracy advocates conclude an informal poll on the ground rules for the 2017 election to determine the territory’s next chief executive. Beijing has strongly condemned the grass-roots referendum, calling it “illegal” and a “farce.” But the more the Chinese government fulminates, the more Hong Kong residents line up to register their wishes, both online and at ballot boxes.

As of Monday, more than 700,000 registered voters had participated, mostly by using smartphone apps or the Internet. That’s seven times the number that Occupy Central, the group organizing the poll, originally expected. On Sunday, organizers also opened more than a dozen polling stations across Hong Kong. Media photographers showed long lines at some of the stations, even though there are still six days left for people to vote.

On Monday, an editorial in the Global Times, a Beijing-based mouthpiece for China’s Communist Party, lashed out at the referendum, calling it a destabilizing invention that was “tinged with mincing ludicrousness.”

“As a special administrative region of China, Hong Kong can’t launch any referendum without the authority of the central government,” the editorial said. “The country would fall into tumult if all regions conducted similar referendums.”

The tumult in question involves how Hong Kong will select candidates who will vie to be its chief executive in 2017. The vote will be the first to pick Hong Kong’s leader since China regained sovereignty over the former British colony in 1997, promising partial autonomy under a principle of “one country, two systems.”

Hong Kong’s Basic Law requires that “a broadly representative committee,” acting “in accordance with democratic procedures,” select candidates to go before voters in 2017.

Democracy advocates fear that, under this vague language, the committee will be stacked to ensure that only Beijing’s hand-picked candidates are on the ballot. Advocates are pressing for public nominations of candidates, a demand that Beijing has rejected as illegal.

To drive that point home, the Chinese central government on June 10 issued a “white paper” on Hong Kong, asserting that the region’s autonomy is completely at the discretion of Beijing. While many in Hong Kong recognize that political reality, the timing of the white paper was viewed as an implicit threat to punish Hong Kong should it continue push for political reforms.

That threat may be backfiring on Beijing. Angered at apparent bullying, popular opinion appears to be swinging toward Occupy Central.
That group, formed by academics and an array of pro-democracy groups, has threatened to “occupy” the central part of Hong Kong’s business district if China doesn’t agree to an election system that meets international standards.

Even activists who aren’t fully supportive of Occupy Central’s tactics say that China seems oblivious to how its actions are being viewed in Hong Kong. “The most effective way for Beijing to calm resistance is to assert less control, not more,” Michael C. Davis, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, wrote in a commentary in the South China Morning Post earlier this month.

Photo via WikiCommons

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Strong Turnout For Referendum On Choosing Hong Kong’s Leader

Strong Turnout For Referendum On Choosing Hong Kong’s Leader

By Julie Makinen, Los Angeles Times

BEIJING — More than 400,000 Hong Kong residents cast electronic ballots Friday in a nonbinding referendum aimed at giving the Chinese city’s 7.2 million people more of a voice in how their chief executive is selected, organizers of the vote said.

However, authorities in Beijing denounced the exercise as illegal, and the online voting system was repelling heavy cyberattacks.

Voting is slated to continue for the next 10 days, but participation has already far exceeded what organizers of the Occupy Central movement had hoped for. As recently as last week, leaders had said they would consider the exercise a success if at least 100,000 people took part.

Residents of the former British colony can vote online, by mobile phone, or in person at a few scattered balloting stations by June 29.

China’s State Council, or cabinet, has denounced the voting, saying all the proposals on the ballot are not in line with the Basic Law, which laid out guidelines for how Hong Kong was to be governed after the territory returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Under a system known as “one country, two systems,” Hong Kong is to have a high degree of autonomy from Beijing for 50 years, and residents enjoy greater political and personal freedoms than their mainland counterparts.

According to the Basic Law, Hong Kong residents are to be able to vote directly for their city’s chief executive in 2017. But the voting rules have not been settled yet, and organizers of this month’s referendum fear that the mechanism that will be proposed by mainland authorities will fall short of full democracy. They mostly worry that candidates who are unacceptable to China’s rulers will be screened out by a selection committee stacked with pro-Beijing members.

By voting in the nonbinding referendum, which is being run by the University of Hong Kong’s Public Opinion Program, participants hope to influence the rule-making for the election.

Organizers of the movement, whose full name is Occupy Central with Peace and Love, have threatened to stage a nonviolent mass sit-in in the city’s financial district, known as Central, if the ultimate election rules fail to meet their expectations.

In the run-up to Friday’s balloting, local opponents of Occupy Central launched a campaign aimed at dissuading people from participating. A video released by the group Silent Majority, which said it commissioned a traffic impact study, warned that a civil disobedience campaign in which 10,000 blocked the streets of Central would paralyze the city.

“In just one hour … 1.3 million Hong Kong people are stuck on the island,” says the narrator, Robert Chow. “Like dominoes, our traffic system collapses. … Ambulances, fire engines and police cars are immobilized. Pregnant women, babies, children need help — then what?
“Occupy Central — they can kill this city,” the video concludes. “The question is, do we let them?”

Ahead of the referendum, public opinion polls showed Hong Kongers to be lukewarm on the entire Occupy Central campaign. It was unclear whether attacks on supporters in the run-up to the vote may have added momentum to the movement, which just weeks ago looked to be flagging amid internal disagreements.

Photo via WikiCommons

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