Hong Kong Police Fire Tear Gas At Protesters, But They’re Not Going Anywhere

Business Insider – by Gus Lubin and Michael B Kelly, Reuters

Hong Kong democracy protesters stayed in the streets on Sunday night despite multiple volleys of tear gas and use of pepper spray and batons by riot police.

“Atmosphere has completely changed on streets of Hong Kong following police firing tear gas. From hopeful to furious. And crowd has swelled,” AFP editor Jerome Taylor tweeted.

“The use of tear gas by the Hong Kong police has had a 10x multiplier on the number of protestors. No wonder they stopped,” US expat and military historian Andrew Leyden tweeted.  

Hours later, crowds of people were still gathered in city’s Admiralty district, according to SCMP’s live blog. DBS Bank branches in Admiralty will be closed on Monday morning “due to instability in the area.”

Several people told SCMP they joined the protest after seeing he tear gas being fired.

“It’s necessary for Hongkongers to stand united and support these non-violent students against excessive force,” a 23-year-old IT worker said said. “You can tell how irresponsible the government is by evading the public after all these people came out.”

REUTERS/Bobby YipPolice attack with pepper spray.

One 53-year-old woman joined the protest after she witnessed agressive police behavior toward students.

“How could the police say the students were crashing against you when you were in fact pushing forth against them?” she said. “It’s my civil responsibility to show support for the students. The government must be scared if it uses such irrational force.”

The organizers at the main stage of the demonstrations, however, are advising people to retreat.

“It is a matter of life and death,” Occupy Central co-organiser Dr Chan Kin-man said. “We put people’s safety as our top priority. Retreat doesn’t mean giving up.. we will still continue to struggle.”

Chan added that is had become difficult for Occupy Central to control the crowd.

“We do not want to see anyone get hurt. A victory with sacrificed lives is not a victory,” a Cardinal Zen, who was among the organizers, said. “Today we have sent out a very clear message … [but] we have witnessed an irrational regime. Please go home! There’s nothing we can talk with [the government about].”

SCMP reports that the atmosphere remains tense.

Police are trying to stop the crowd from blocking a key road in the government district after Hong Kong and Chinese officials warned against illegal demonstrations.

Bobby Yip / ReutersA protester raises his umbrellas amid tear gas.

The city’s Admiralty district had descended into chaos as chanting protesters converged on police barricades surrounding their colleagues who had earlier launched a “new era” of civil disobedience to pressure Beijing into granting full democracy to Hong Kong.

Police, in lines five deep in places wearing helmets and gas masks, staged repeated pepper spray and baton charges and threw tear gas. The crowds initially fled several hundred yards, scattering their umbrellas, but have come back.

Police had not used tear gas in Hong Kong since 2005, to break up World Trade Organization protests against South Korean farmers.

“We will fight until the end…we will never give up,” said Peter Poon, a protester in his 20s, adding that they may have to make a temporary retreat through the night.

ReutersSome protesters flee from tear gas.

Although many protesters came with protective measures, some appeared unprepared for the police response. In this video a police officer grabs an elderly protester and pepper-sprays her unprotected face:

Chanting “remove the blockade” and “shame on you”, thousands of protesters blocked some of Hong Kong‘s busiest streets, Gloucester Road and Harcourt Road, and milled among the stalled traffic after Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying pledged “resolute” action against a movement known as Occupy Central with Love and Peace.

“The police are determined to handle the situation appropriately in accordance with the law,” Leung said, less than two hours before the police charge began.

A spokesperson for China’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office added that the central government fully supported Hong Kong’s handling of the situation “in accordance with the law”.

“WE WILL WIN WITH LOVE AND PEACE”

Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a formula known as “one country, two systems” that guaranteed a high degree of autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed in mainland China. Universal suffrage was set as an eventual goal.

But Beijing last month rejected demands for people to freely choose the city’s next leader, prompting threats from activists to shut down Central. China wants to limit elections to a handful of candidates loyal to Beijing.

While promising a fresh round of public consultation, Leung also described Beijing’s decision as “legally binding”.

Publishing tycoon Jimmy Lai, a key backer of the democratic movement, said he wanted as big a crowd of protesters as possible, after a week of student demonstrations, to thwart any crackdown.

“The more Hong Kong citizens come, the more unlikely the police can clear up the place,” said Lai, also wearing a plastic cape and workmen’s protective glasses.

“Even if we get beaten up, we cannot fight back. We will win this war with love and peace.”

Some protesters have trained for months in non-violent resistance, determined to make it as hard as possible for police to move them – their actions mirrored by police who have also stepped up anti-riot training and other tactics.

Bobby Yip / ReutersMany protesters were ready with goggles and other protective gear.

Communist Party leaders in Beijing are terrified of calls for democracy spreading to cities on the mainland, threatening their grip on power. Such dissent would never be allowed on the mainland, where student protests calling for democracy were crushed with heavy loss of life on and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

On the mainland, the phrase “Occupy Central” was blocked on Sunday afternoon on Weibo, China’s version of twitter. It had been allowed earlier in the day.

Later, a Hong Kong government statement urged the Occupy organizers to bring an end to the “chaos” for the overall interest of Hong Kong.

A tearful Occupy organizer Benny Tai said he was proud of people’s determination to fight for “genuine” universal suffrage, but that the situation was getting out of control, RTHK reported. He said he believed he would face heavy punishment for initiating the movement.

Inside the cordon, thousands had huddled in plastic capes, masks and goggles as they braced for a fresh police attempt to clear the area before Hong Kong re-opens for business in the morning. The city’s financial markets are expected to open as usual on Monday.

REUTERS/StringerRiot police fire tear gas to disperse protesters after thousands of protesters blocked the main street to the financial Central district outside the government headquarters in Hong Kong September 28, 2014.

TENACIOUS DISOBEDIENCE

Organizers said as many as 80,000 people thronged the streets in Admiralty, galvanized by the arrests of student activists on Friday.

No independent estimate of the crowd numbers was available but the action is being seen as the most tenacious civil disobedience action since 1997.

A week of protests escalated into violence when student-led demonstrators broke through a cordon late on Friday and scaled a fence to invade the city’s main government compound after a week of peaceful action. Police used pepper spray to disperse the crowd.

REUTERS/StringerA protester walks in tear gas fired by riot policemen after thousands of protesters blocking the main street to the financial Central district outside the government headquarters in Hong Kong September 28, 2014.

The clashes were the most heated in a series of anti-Beijing protests that underscore the central government’s challenge to stamp its will on Hong Kong.

Police have so far arrested 78 people, including Joshua Wong, the 17-year-old leader of student group Scholarism, who was dragged away after he called on the protesters to charge the government premises. He was still in detention on Sunday.

His parents said in a statement the decision to detain him was an act of “political persecution”.

As the crowd built in support of the students, the leaders of Occupy announced they had brought forward their own campaign, which had been due to start mid-week targeting the Central financial district.

Along with Hong Kong and Chinese officials, some of Hong Kong‘s most powerful tycoons have spoken out against the Occupy movement, warning it could threaten the city’s business and economic stability.

(Additional reporting by James Pomfret, Venus Wu, Diana Chan, Kinling Lo, Stephen Aldred, Farah Master, Twinnie Siu, Charlie Zhu and Bobby Yip; Writing by Greg Torode; Editing by Nick Macfie and Alex Richardson)

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