Police Unleash Tear Gas in Hong Kong Protests

International New York Times | 28 September 2014

Riot police used tear gas against protesters after thousands of people blocked a main road to the financial central district outside the government headquarters in Hong Kong on Sunday. Credit Vincent Yu/Associated Press

HONG KONG — Pro-democracy clashes escalated in Hong Kong on Sunday as the police unleashed tear gas in an effort to clear thousands of protesters who have besieged the city government for three days.

The Chinese government condemned the demonstration. But by confronting the protesters in a bid to appease the Chinese Communist Party, the Hong Kong authorities could risk angering even more city residents, experts said.

The police efforts to contain the demonstrators triggered confrontation at the protest area and others nearby. After access to the area was blocked, thousands of supporters defied a police cordon and pushed their way onto a six-lane highway, bringing traffic to a standstill. At one entryway, the police also squirted pepper spray and raised their batons to ward off angry residents.

“At this stage, it looks like they will have to show their fist,” said Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a longtime commentator on Chinese politics who teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, while visiting the sit-in protest site. “If the police mishandle this, then government leaders will also appear ineffective.”

Riot police used pepper spray on protesters after thousands of people blocked a main road to the financial central district outside government headquarters in Hong Kong on Sunday. Credit Vincent Yu/Associated Press

Police lobbed canisters of tear gas into the crowd on Sunday evening after spending hours holding the protesters at bay, according to The Associated Press. The searing fumes from tear gas sent people fleeing down the road.

The Hong Kong government has been grappling with how to defuse the sit-in protest that started on Friday night and lasted over the weekend, swelling at times to a crowd of tens of thousands. The Chinese government, which exercises sovereignty over Hong Kong as a “special administrative region,” added to the pressure for a response by publicly condemning the protests.

“The central government adamantly opposes the various illegal acts that have occurred in Hong Kong, damaging rule of law and social order,” said an unnamed spokesman for the Chinese government Hong Kong affairs office, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency.

“We have full confidence and firmly support the special administrative region government in handling this according to the law, maintaining social stability in Hong Kong, and protecting the safety of the lives and property of Hong Kong residents,” the spokesman said.

For Hong Kong’s police, clearing the protest area could be tricky, and involve taking on potentially thousands of determined demonstrators in an area broken up by barriers, concrete pylons and other obstacles that could either protect protesters or create dangerous bottlenecks for the crowd.

But for Hong Kong’s leaders and Communist Party leaders in Beijing, the protest also presents a political quandary: move too gently, and they risk losing the initiative; move too forcefully, and they risk alienating public sentiment in the city.

“What is going on now, in addition to any immediate public order issues, is a battle for the hearts and minds of the Hong Kong public,” said Michael C. Davis, a professor of law at the University of Hong Kong who has closely followed the election reform debate at the heart of the protests.

“While protest may have a weak chance of getting Beijing to back down, indifference or heavy-handed tactics on the part of the Hong Kong government could anger the public and increase support for the protesters,” he said.

Although the police had been practicing for months to quell planned protests over election rule changes, they failed to prevent hundreds of students from charging into a forecourt at the city government headquarters on Friday, drawing many more supporters who occupied an avenue and open areas next to the fenced-in forecourt. The students inside the forecourt were dragged off by the police on Saturday, but the supporters outside have stayed.

On Sunday afternoon, the police began to seal off the sit-in area and stopped most people from entering. The city leader, Leung Chun-ying, told a news conference that the protesters were using illegal means to threaten the government, and he declared his “absolute trust in the professional judgment of the police.”

But Benny Tai, an associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong who has led the city’s main pro-democracy campaign, said he and other protesters were prepared to stay and peacefully resist any effort to clear the area, which many of them call “Civic Square.”

“At this stage, we will defend Civic Square with citizens and students until the last minute,” Mr. Tai said in an interview, his voice raspy after two days of constant speeches and interviews. He said that the Hong Kong government’s response would probably be guided by advice and signals from Beijing, which exercises sovereignty over the city.

“It’s hard for me to guess what the Chinese government thinks,” he said. “A responsible government that loves its people would be moved and touched. But I’m not sure they love their own people.”

Several democratic politicians in Hong Kong said the unexpected strength of the young protesters had persuaded an older generation to cede more influence to student activists, who seem less open to compromise with authoritarian Beijing.

“What happened since yesterday was beyond our expectation,” Albert Ho, 62, a member of the Democratic Party in Hong Kong’s Legislature, said in an interview late Saturday.

“Now the younger people have taken control and used their advantage of surprise,” Mr. Ho said at an exuberant rally attended by thousands of people, mostly in their 20s or younger, in front of the city government offices. “This is something that will deeply concern the government.”

The power of the young activists was underlined when Occupy Central with Love and Peace, Mr. Tai’s group, announced an abrupt change in its plans for civil disobedience protests in the city’s main financial district, known as Central. Those demonstrations, which the organizers said were likely to start on Wednesday, would oppose election proposals issued last month by the Chinese government that the campaign says do not offer authentic democratic options for choosing the city’s chief executive.

In the early hours of Sunday, Mr. Tai announced that the students’ “occupation” in front of the city government offices would for now be the base for his group’s protests as well.

“Students have activated Hong Kong’s largest-scale civil disobedience campaign ever,” Mr. Tai said from a small stage, in a speech punctuated by roaring cheers and shouted slogans. He said the group was still examining how it might stage protests in Central, as it first planned. “We’ll begin,” he said, “by occupying the central government offices.”

Throughout the weekend, protesters had turned the government complex beside Victoria Harbour into a raucous but orderly camp. The protests started after a weeklong boycott of classes by university students to protest China’s election plan.

“We think that this place is ours, not the government’s,” said Will Mak Wing-kai, a student from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“I want the government to be representative, elected by us from our hearts, not by the Chinese government,” Mr. Mak said, rapidly taking phone calls about organizing the swelling crowd. Under current electoral laws, the chief executive is selected by a committee dominated by Beijing loyalists.

On Saturday, the crowd grew into many thousands, and veered from angry jeering to an almost celebratory mood when the number of police officers thinned. Official agencies offered no estimates of crowd totals.

Many in the crowd — fearing that the police would use pepper spray, as they had on Friday night and Saturday morning — unfurled umbrellas, donned plastic raincoats and gauze masks, and put plastic wrap over their eyes. Some wore yellow ribbons symbolizing hope for change. Seventy-four people have been arrested since the confrontation started on Friday, the police said Saturday.

Some older protesters said the sight of the police squirting pepper spray at the students, which was shown on television news reports, galvanized support for the demonstration. In a society that reveres education, the students have drawn an outpouring of donations from residents, who sent bottled water, tissues and snacks, which accumulated into mountains of supplies.

Some sensed echoes from Beijing 25 years ago, when the students who occupied Tiananmen Square received public support and donations before the protests were brutally suppressed.

“They are ready to pick up the democracy baton from the student movement in China in 1989,” said Sunny Lau, 57, who said he had been pepper-sprayed by the police at this weekend’s protests.

Since Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the former British colony has kept its independent courts and legal protections for free speech and assembly, as well as a robust civil society. But many democratic groups and politicians say those freedoms have eroded under mainland China’s growing political and economic influence.

The current chief executive, Mr. Leung, has backed Beijing’s plan for electoral changes, which for the first time would let the public vote for the city’s leader, starting in 2017. But critics say the plan includes procedural hurdles that would screen out candidates who do not have Beijing’s implicit blessing, making the popular vote meaningless.

Anger with the Chinese government runs especially deep among Hong Kong residents in their 30s and younger, according to polls. Younger residents feel squeezed by rising housing prices and living expenses and lack of upward mobility, and they often accuse the government of pandering to tycoons.

“I think unfairness is spreading in Hong Kong, and because of the political system,” said Edith Fung, 21, a student of land surveying. “I don’t want Hong Kong to change to be like China, with corruption, unfairness, no press freedom, no religious freedom.”

Ms. Fung said she had been indifferent to politics until this year, and Eva Mo, a nursing student who helped provide first aid to protesters, said she was participating in her first demonstration against the government. “They treated the students like children,” she said. “We only asked for dialogue. But there was none.”