[After almost three months of tumult, the street
protests had dwindled to a few dozen tents in the Causeway Bay area, a hectic
shopping district. Before the police moved in to clear the area, most of the
remaining dozens of protesters packed away their tents and sleeping bags and
left the road of shops and malls festooned with Christmas decorations. About 16
stayed sitting on the road, waiting to be arrested in a gesture of support for
what they call the Umbrella Movement, after the umbrellas used to fend off
police pepper spray.]
 |
Police officers cleared the
last remaining protest site in the
district of Hong Kong on
Monday. Credit Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters
|
HONG KONG — Pro-democracy protests that swept onto
the streets ofHong Kong 11 weeks ago faced a muted ending on Monday, when the
police dismantled the last remaining road occupation, and a prominent student
activist, Joshua Wong, appeared in court with about 30 other arrested
protesters.
But the city still confronted aftershocks from the
months of political strife.
After almost three months of tumult, the street
protests had dwindled to a few dozen tents in the Causeway Bay area, a hectic
shopping district. Before the police moved in to clear the area, most of the
remaining dozens of protesters packed away their tents and sleeping bags and
left the road of shops and malls festooned with Christmas decorations. About 16
stayed sitting on the road, waiting to be arrested in a gesture of support for
what they call the Umbrella Movement, after the umbrellas used to fend off
police pepper spray.
“It’s my responsibility,” said Harry Chow, 47, a
floor polisher who said he had quit his job to join the protests and would
accept arrest. “I want to tell people that the Umbrella Movement is not ending,
and this is just a small part of it.”
Within 30 minutes of the police moving in, the last
tent was pulled down, and trucks mounted with cranes were brought in to clear
debris from the road, while clusters of protesters shouted from the sidewalk.
The camp at Causeway Bay was by far the smallest, and the least volatile, of
the street occupations that sprang up across Hong Kong on Sept. 28. That day
the police’s use of tear gas and pepper spray to disperse student
protesters around the city government headquarters backfired, and tens of thousands
of people took to the streets in anger, also demanding that the government heed
their calls for democratic voting rights.
“We achieved something,” said Teresa Liu, a student
who said she had regularly stayed at the camp since Sept. 29. “We achieved
international notice, and since we got notice, China has no excuse to hide
anymore.”
But the Hong Kong government gave no substantial
concessions, and the protest movement increasingly succumbed to exhaustion and
internal fractures. On Thursday, the police demolished the biggest camp,
adjacent to the city government headquarters in the Admiralty district, and in
late November they pulled down the camp in Mong Kok, a crowded neighborhood
where protesters seeking to defend and win back their space on the streets had
repeatedly clashed with the police.
Even with the streets cleared of barricades, Hong
Kong faces reverberations from months of divisive confrontation, including
court cases for protesters arrested for resisting the police and similar
charges. As well, the government proposal for overhauling elections must
undergo a new round of public comment, offering opponents another chance to
mobilize.
The government’s proposed changes would for the
first time allow Hong Kong residents to vote directly for the city’s leader, or
chief executive. But protesters and many other critics say the proposed rules
would offer only a sham public say. Real power would reside with the Chinese
government, which could exclude candidates it did not like.
“In a way, this blew up in Beijing’s face,” Michael
C. Davis, a professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, said in an
interview. “They’ve got a whole civil society up in arms. The danger is that
their answer to problems in Hong Kong has been more control, and this is
exactly what’s causing the public tensions.”
On Monday, the Hong Kong High Court held a brief
hearing for about 30 arrested protesters, including Mr. Wong, the bespectacled
18-year-old who became one of the movement’s best-known leaders. The judge
adjourned the case to early next year.
A few dozen protesters have also continued to camp
on space around the Legislative Council’s building near Admiralty. Officials
from the legislature had to give their approval before the police could enter
the area to remove the protesters, the police have said. The local news media,
citing police sources, said that area would also be cleared on Monday.
“We still haven’t got what we wanted,” said Jerry
Lau, 34, a former driver who was among the protesters at the city legislature
building. “I stayed here for over 70 days, so we still want a result.”
Alan Wong and Hilda Wang contributed reporting.
