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Hong Kong Police Turn Back Siege on Government - New York Times




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Confrontation Between Protesters and Police Continues in Hong Kong



Confrontation Between Protesters and Police Continues in Hong Kong


Chris Mcgrath/Getty Images






HONG KONG — Pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong suffered a setback on Monday, when their attempt overnight to besiege government offices collapsed and the police thrust into the protesters’ biggest street camp.


The reversal came after a night of seesaw clashes in the political heart of the city, ending weeks of anxious calm at the protesters’ main street camp and throwing into question how much longer the Hong Kong government would tolerate hundreds of tents only a stone’s throw from the city’s administrative and legislative complex.


Fear rippled through the protest camp, with some student leaders defending the decision to escalate the confrontation with the police, and others wondering whether the protest leaders had made the right decision.


Many protesters wore masks and goggles, worried that the police would use pepper spray.



“The police have never gotten so close to the heart of our camp,” said Augustine Chung, a 24-year-old employee of a nongovernmental organization who was among the protesters. “I can only hope the student leaders know what to do next.”




Early Monday morning, Hong Kong police officers clashed with pro-democracy protesters as hundreds of protesters tried to surround government headquarters. Vincent Yu/Associated Press

Sunday night began with rousing speeches and calls for peaceful disobedience from the student leaders in the main protest camp, in the Admiralty neighborhood. But the bravado gave way to chaotic, panicky strife at the nearby government complex, where the police did indeed use pepper spray and batons to drive back protesters.


The tumult erupted soon after student leaders urged protesters to besiege city government offices in an attempt to force concessions to their demands for democratic elections for the city’s leader. The protesters have said that election plans for the city offered by the Chinese government will not give voters a real say. Student protest leaders, who have dithered and debated over the direction of their movement, said their patience had expired.


“We feel that the government feels no pressure if this movement simply drags on like this,” said Oscar Lai, a leader of Scholarism, a protest group of high school and university students, who urged protesters to peacefully block the Hong Kong leader’s office. “This escalation shows that Hong Kong people can’t wait anymore.”


“Surround the government,” Nathan Law, a leading member of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, said from a podium in the Admiralty protest camp where thousands of people had gathered.


Minutes later, thousands of protesters surged toward the government offices, including the headquarters of Hong Kong’s chief executive, where the police were ready with barricades and anti-riot equipment. The action ended an armistice that for several weeks had allowed government staff members and the chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, to go to work minutes from the protest camp without any hindrance.


By 3 a.m. Monday, the police had arrested 40 people in Admiralty, the site of the largest remaining protest camp. (Protesters also maintain a much smaller street camp in Causeway Bay, a shopping district.)


The protesters’ actions were “completely in contravention of the organizers’ declared principles of nonviolence,” the police said in a statement.


The clashes came after a week in which the beleaguered pro-democracy movement lost its street camp in the Mong Kok neighborhood, one of three such camps that demonstrators have held since Sept. 28. Back then, a police operation to disperse protesters backfired, and thousands of residents surged onto the streets, irate at the police’s use of batons, pepper spray and tear gas.


“The action tonight is to paralyze government operations,” Alex Chow, the secretary-general of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, one of the two student groups that initiated the attempted siege, said early Monday. “Our objective is very clear, which is to have the government respond to our demand, and this action will continue until they respond.”




Police officers threw a pro-democracy protester to the ground outside government headquarters in Hong Kong on Sunday. Kin Cheung/Associated Press

But if student protest leaders felt they could no longer wait, they offered little illumination of how they expected to succeed. Even protesters caught up in the euphoria of defiance feared they could win only a Pyrrhic victory before the police regained the upper hand.


“I don’t know if we can hold out for so long,” said Murphy Wong, a writer who was among the protesters outside the barricades at the chief executive’s office. Like many protesters, he wore goggles and a surgical mask as protection against pepper spray. “I’m not very confident our movement can influence and outlast the government,” he said. “But if we didn’t make our point, it would be even worse.”


Soon after he spoke, the police raised flags warning that people faced arrest if they did not leave, but the crowd remained defiant and poured across a harborside road and blocked the chief executive’s office. The police with riot shields and helmets then used pepper spray to force back the crowd, and soon dozens of protesters lay on the grass of an adjacent park while first-aid teams poured water on their eyes.


The police forces regrouped and further drove back the protesters to a nearby park facing Victoria Harbor. A back-and-forth struggle lasted for more than an hour until the police retreated. But at 7 a.m. the police moved against the exhausted protesters, many of whom were sleeping on the road. The police continued their charge, pushing demonstrators out of the park and across a pedestrian bridge over the main protest area, where panicky crowds ran back and forth. It was the police’s deepest incursion into the protest camp since the occupation began.


The crowds of retreating protesters blocked any further advance by the police by throwing metal barriers, bags of trash, shopping carts and other boxes onto the escalator leading to the pedestrian bridge, forming a crude barricade. But many of the thousands of protesters around the Admiralty camp wondered how much longer they could stay.


“This is our final stand,” said Leo, an 18-year-old student, wearing a gas mask, goggles and a white towel draped over his neck, who helped build the barricade on the escalator. Like growing numbers of the protesters, he would not give his full name, fearing punishment. “I think the government will ignore us again but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”


By late morning, the alarm in the camp had subsided, and many of the hundreds of protesters still there slept after an exhausting night. Some grumbled about the lack of direction on what to do next.


Still, despite having to retreat, protesters almost succeeded in blocking access to Hong Kong’s principal government offices. The most heavily used routes into the building were barricaded, with only a few detours available for the hundreds of civil servants who work there.


In mid-October, the government offices and a nearby traffic tunnel and park became a battleground between the police and protesters who blockaded the chief executive’s office. Hundreds of police officers used pepper spray to disperse hundreds of demonstrators.


The student groups at the forefront of the protests had urged supporters to congregate in Admiralty and bring the now-familiar paraphernalia of the protest: safety helmets and drinking water, as well as goggles and umbrellas to fend off bursts of pepper spray.


“There comes a time when you need to take some risks, and that’s what we did,” said Boon Ho Sung, a 36-year-old stage actor among the protesters. “This will trigger another wave of action from the people.”




Alan Wong and Michael Forsythe contributed reporting.



A version of this article appears in print on December 1, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Hong Kong Police Turn Back Siege on Government.










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