Sunday, October 5, 2014

• Protesters Pulling Back From Hong Kong Offices After Handshake Deal By KEITH BRADSHER and CHRIS BUCKLEY

By KEITH BRADSHER and CHRIS BUCKLEY

HONG KONG — Pro-democracy demonstrators began pulling back from a sit-in outside the offices of Hong Kong’s leader on Sunday night after the government set a Monday morning deadline for the police to ensure access to the complex.



The apparent concession — announced with a handshake between a protester who said the gesture was intended to pave the way for talks with the government and a police official who thanked him — appeared to ease the immediate risk of a confrontation. 

The police had been ordered to restore access to the building by the start of the workweek, according to two people with detailed knowledge of the official deliberations.
But it was not clear whether the partial withdrawal would be enough to prevent a showdown between the police and protesters, who have shown no sign of leaving other sites they have occupied for over a week. 


Nor was it clear whether all of the protesters would go along with the pullback from one of the entrances to the government offices.
The police have been given leeway on how and when to enforce the orders, said the two people, both of whom insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions.


Hong Kong’s leader, or chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, “has laid down the word: Offices have to be accessible by tomorrow morning,” one of the two people said.
The Hong Kong police are capable of clearing the streets and would not need help from mainland Chinese security forces, that person said.
“The protesters are also looking for a way to stand down, though some die-hards would remain — minimum force would be used only if needed,” the person said, adding that the precise time for moving in on protesters was being left to the discretion of the police.


The police used tear gas a week ago in an attempt to disperse protesters, but more crowds arrived in response to what were perceived by many as unnecessarily heavy-handed tactics by the authorities.


The proposed Monday morning deadline set up a possible confrontation on Sunday between the passionate, often disjointed protest movement and a government that, taking its cue from Beijing, has refused to compromise on the protesters’ broadly shared demands: democratic elections for the leader of Hong Kong and the removal of the incumbent, Mr. Leung. 


His previous demands for the protesters to leave have been ignored.


Dennis Kwok, a lawyer and member of the city’s Legislative Council who calls himself a moderate democrat, said in an interview that people aligned with the establishment had told him that the police would be sent to protest zones Sunday night, with the aim of clearing them.
But he said it was unclear how the police could accomplish that.
“If they use tear gas, that will bring people into the streets again,” he said, referring to the aggressive police actions against student protesters on Sept. 28 that gave birth to the movement also called Occupy Central. 


“The Hong Kong government played its hand so badly. They left themselves with very few options. They shouldn’t have used tear gas that day.”



At a news conference on Sunday afternoon, Hui Chun-tak, the chief spokesman of the Hong Kong police, appealed to protesters to remove barricades from the streets, but refrained from setting deadlines.
“We are determined to take all necessary actions to restore the public order,” he said.
Meanwhile, a government spokesman urged student leaders to clear a footbridge leading to the main government offices and allow 3,000 staff members to return to work on Monday.
He also asked for roads in Admiralty, near the government offices, to be reopened so that schools in the area could resume classes.


The Hong Kong Federation of Students, the association of university students that has been at the heart of the protests for more than a week, denied that access to the government offices was blocked, saying that a path would be opened for civil servants. 


But thousands of protesters have been occupying the roads around the offices and have blocked the entrances to the chief executive’s office, and the federation said it was “hard to persuade protesters to leave when there hasn’t been any progress on their demands over political reform.”
The street-level impasse has been paralleled and intensified by a battle over the very definition of the conflict and what is at stake. 


The Chinese Communist Party has called the protests a “color revolution,” an orchestrated scheme to challenge party rule.
Student leaders have responded that the movement is a peaceful, grass-roots upsurge, with aims limited to the city.
“The Occupy movement is by no means a revolution,” said the Hong Kong Federation of Students. 


It said dialogue with the city government was still possible, if the police “properly handled” clashes between supporters and opponents of the democracy demonstrations that seized several major streets a week ago.
Mr. Leung already opened the way for a possible showdown between the protesters and the police on Sunday, after he warned a day before that sit-ins blocking entry to his office and occupying major roads must leave by Monday, when the city returns to work. 


“If these incidents continue, they are extremely likely to go out of control,” he said.
But an exuberant rally of tens of thousands of protesters on Saturday defied his demand to end what many call the Umbrella Revolution, named after the everyday object that many participants carry to fend off sun, rain and pepper spray salvos by the police.
Three singers performed a newly written song dedicated to the campaign for democracy, “Raise the Umbrella Together.”
“Now we are students, but in 10 or 20 years, we will be adults and will be responsible for this society. We need to stand up now and speak,” said Matthew Yu, a 15-year-old student who was at the main protest encampment, in Admiralty near the government offices, on Sunday. 


He said he had attended the protests, which had swelled to tens of thousands at night and dwindled in the day, for five days.


“Young students have been told to run if police begin clearing the area, to protect their safety,” he said, “but some will probably stay.”
In an atmosphere of raw distrust, even small clashes have the potential to ignite bigger clashes, especially if there is bloodshed.
The former chief justice of Hong Kong, Andrew Li Kwok-nang, university leaders, churches and other groups in Hong Kong have urged people to leave the streets and avoid a dangerous confrontation.


“Please stay calm and leave in an orderly manner without delay,” Peter Mathieson, the president and vice chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, said in a message to staff and students on Sunday.
“I am making this appeal from my heart because I genuinely believe that if you stay, there is a risk to your safety.”
Student leaders and democratic politicians have accused the police of failing to protect protesters who were attacked by gangs of men, some of them members of underworld triads, on Friday in Mong Kok, where a sit-in has blocked one of the busiest shopping streets in the city. 


Scuffles and clashes between the police and some protesters resurfaced there on Saturday night, and some protesters said anger over the police response had undermined chances for a negotiated withdrawal from the streets by the movement.
“The police reaction to the triads has cut off the opportunity to leave,” said Miu Ying-kui, a sociology student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who had been collecting information on crowd sizes and incidents for protest organizers. 


She said many worried about what could happen before Monday.
But retreat seemed too painful to consider.
“We Hong Kong people have totally lost confidence in the government, so it’s very difficult for us to step down,” she said.
Real decision-making power on the side of the authorities rests in Beijing with Xi Jinping.
Since assuming leadership of the Communist Party in late 2012, Xi has repeatedly demanded vigilance against threats to party control and national sovereignty, especially from the Western powers. 


And to the party, those perceived threats appear to be embodied in the youthful democratic movement in Hong Kong, a former British colony that has preserved its own legal system and liberties.


11 and other leaders have not spoken publicly about the eruption of unrest, but the news outlets under their grip have stepped up reports and commentaries describing the Occupy movement as a plot to turn Hong Kong into an opposition bridgehead to challenge party power across all of China.
Some longtime observers of Chinese politics have seen similarities between the deepening standoff in Hong Kong and the student protests that erupted across China in 1989, which ended when the party leaders ordered armed troops to retake Tiananmen Square. 


While few see the risk of similar carnage in Hong Kong, some supporters fear the protests could end in violent confrontation that saps the strength of the democracy movement.


Bao Tong, a former senior party aide who was purged and imprisoned in 1989 for seeking to avert a crackdown on the student protests, suggested the demonstrators in Hong Kong withdraw for now. “Take a break, for the sake of future room to grow,” he said in a commentaryto Radio Free Asia.


No comments:

Post a Comment