[A crowd of several hundred gathered outside Mr.
Leung’s office late Thursday afternoon, many of them demonstrators who said
they were determined to stop him from returning to work Friday. Metal barriers
and dozens of police officers prevented them from getting closer to the
entrance. But none of the officers visible were in riot gear, and the
atmosphere in the crowd was more amicable than menacing.]
By Austin Ramzy,
Chris Buckley
The protesters’ numbers appeared thinner
at the main protest site during the day Thursday. And after a two-day public
holiday, many Hong Kong residents were due to return to work on Friday, meaning
that the traffic delays and disruptions caused by the protests would affect a
broader swath of the public, potentially cutting into support for the
demonstrations.
Tim Lam, an engineer who said he had
joined the sit-ins every day since Sunday, said he expected the occupation to
last another week at most. “That’s about how long the protesters’ passion can
last,” he said. “After one, two weeks of occupation, protesters would start to
think about how it affects the economy, the everyday lives of people.”
Some student leaders have called for
protests to expand to other government buildings if Hong Kong ’s
top leader, Leung Chun-ying, does not step down. Hui Chun-tak, the chief
spokesman for the Hong Kong police, strongly warned at a
news conference on Thursday afternoon that protesters should not escalate their
actions. “The police will not tolerate any illegal surrounding of government
buildings,” he said. Images of police officers carrying riot gear into
government offices were posted on social media Thursday afternoon.
A crowd of several hundred gathered
outside Mr. Leung’s office late Thursday afternoon, many of them demonstrators
who said they were determined to stop him from returning to work Friday. Metal
barriers and dozens of police officers prevented them from getting closer to
the entrance. But none of the officers visible were in riot gear, and the
atmosphere in the crowd was more amicable than menacing.
“We won’t try to get inside,” said Jackie
Au, an accountant who was setting up supplies of water for the night. “We’ll
very politely voice our message,” meaning a call for Mr. Leung’s resignation
and for “real elections,” she said. The crowd continued to swell into the early
evening.
On Thursday, the Chinese Communist Party
delivered its strongest rhetorical attack yet on the protest movement. In a
front-page commentary, People’s Daily, the party’s main newspaper, accused
pro-democracy groups of threatening to drag Hong Kong
into “chaos.”
The commentary laid bare the chasm of
expectations between the party and democratic activists in Hong Kong ,
and, in citing the party leadership, including President Xi Jinping, it
appeared to rule out compromise over the demonstrators’ main demands. The
protesters want an open democratic vote for the city’s leader, or chief
executive; many have also demanded the resignation of the current leader, Mr.
Leung.
“If matters are not dealt with according
to the law, Hong Kong society will fall into chaos,” the
paper said in its commentary.
Protesters interviewed Thursday gave no
indication that a retreat was imminent. But many wondered how long they could
sustain the turnout necessary to block key roads in the city and, in the face
of the local government’s determination to outlast them, just what would mark
an acceptable victory.
Further escalation by the protesters could
alienate members of the public not prepared to accept a demonstration that
affects their daily lives. But without more aggressive steps, the protests
could fade.
“If we take rash actions, we may lose
people’s sympathy,” said Niko Cheng, a recent college graduate and protester in
Mong Kok, a densely populated area of Hong Kong on the Kowloon
Peninsula
Prominent voices in the campaign have
indicated that there is no consensus on what, short of an unlikely reversal of
the central government’s position, would lead to an end of the protests.
“We have to achieve something that will
enable the crowd to claim victory,” said Albert Ho, a pro-democracy lawmaker.
“They must retreat with dignity, but that may not necessarily be complete
victory. There must be a sense of achievement.”
The Chinese government has proposed that
starting in 2017, the territory’s voters would be allowed to choose the chief
executive by ballot. But it has stipulated that there can be only two or three
candidates, and they must be approved by a nomination committee, which would be
dominated by people heeding Beijing ’s
wishes.
Democracy groups and parties in Hong
Kong have demanded election rules that allow an “unfiltered vote,”
and they have called Beijing ’s
proposal a fraudulent voting exercise.
“All the protesters here and Hong Kong
people know it is extremely unlikely the Chinese leaders will respond to our
demands,” Joseph Cheng Yu-shek, a political science professor at the City
University of Hong Kong and a longtime advocate of fuller democracy in the
city, said in an interview at the site of the protests outside Hong Kong’s main
government complex downtown. “We are here to say we are not going to give up,
we will continue to fight on. We are here because as long as we fight on, at
least we haven’t lost.”
Joshua Wong, a 17-year-old student leader,
wrote Thursday on Twitter, “Don’t think that this will be over soon. This is
fundamentally a war of patience and a test of our endurance.”
The People’s Daily commentary accused
Occupy Central With Love and Peace, the movement that has led pro- democracy
campaigning in Hong Kong , of “desecration” of the rule
of law in the city.
“The actions of ‘Occupy Central’ have
flagrantly violated the laws and regulations of Hong Kong ,
severely obstructed traffic and disrupted social order,” the commentary said.
“This is placing the political demands of a minority above the law, hijacking
public opinion in Hong Kong for selfish ends, damaging
the social stability and economic prosperity of Hong Kong .”
The paper said the Communist Party’s
central leadership firmly backed Mr. Leung, who is loathed by many democrats
who accuse him of being a tool of Beijing .
Student groups and democratic politicians who have supported the protests in
Hong Kong have said that Mr. Leung must step down and take responsibility for
the police’s use of tear gas against protesters on Sunday, the confrontation
that set off the even larger demonstrations that erupted on Monday.
“The central government has full
confidence in the Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, and is extremely satisfied
with his work,” the commentary said. It added that Beijing
would “unswervingly support him in running the city” and would “resolutely
support the police force of the special administrative territory in dealing
with illegal activities according to the law.”
People familiar with the Hong
Kong leadership’s thinking said Wednesday that Mr. Leung and his
advisers, with China ’s
approval, had decided to wait and hope that public opinion turns against the
protest movement as it continues to disrupt life in the city. One of the
demonstrators outside the chief executive’s office, Kahei Tse, said the
movement would struggle to maintain its momentum in the face of such a
strategy.
“From the beginning to now it’s been
almost five days,” said Mr. Tse, a 33-year-old fitness trainer. “People have
gotten tired, and the numbers have been reduced, because there’s been no action
taken by the government since the tear gas and pepper spray of the first few
days. So people have backed off a little to wait and see the response from the
government.”
@ MSN News
