Tuesday 18 November 2014

Hong Kong authorities clear part of Admiralty protest site

Court bailiffs in Hong Kong have cleared part of a pro-democracy protest camp in the Admiralty district.The bailiffs, backed by police, dismantled barricades outside
Citic Tower after the building's owners complained about the disruption and were granted a high court injunction.
The student protesters did not resist the clearance, and many helped to remove tents and fences.
The high court has also authorised the clearance of the Mong Kok site.
A third protest camp remains at Causeway Bay.
The activists have been on the streets since early October to protest against a decision by China to screen candidates for Hong Kong's 2017 leadership election. Numbers were originally in the tens of thousands but have fallen to a few hundred.
Hong Kong and the Beijing government say the protests are illegal, and there is growing public frustration with the disruption to traffic and business.
'We will go elsewhere'
The BBC's Karishma Vaswani in Hong Kong said the scene at Admiralty on Tuesday appeared calm on Tuesday morning, with many students saying they would not get in the way and police standing by but not acting.
But they said the peaceful demolition of one part of the camp did not mean the end of their protest, and that they would remain on the streets until their demands were met.
Prominent student leader Joshua Wong told the BBC that they would not resist as long as the authorities only cleared the area mentioned in the injunction. Mr Wong said if the authorities headed to other sites, activists would be "very disappointed".
Garment worker Jason Fung told the South China Morning Post: "We'll just go protest somewhere that the injunction doesn't cover."
The high court has also granted an injunction to taxi and minibus associations to clear the roads in Mong Kok, where on Tuesday protesters had also begun packing up.
More requests have been lodged by bus companies to clear other roads affected by the protest sites.
Police operations to clear and contain the camps in recent weeks have sometimes led to clashes.
An attempt to clear an underpass near Admiralty led to accusations that police had used excessive violence, after a video emerged of officers apparently beating a protester.
At the weekend, a group of student leaders were prevented from travelling to Beijing, where they had hoped to seek an audience with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, after their travel permits were declared invalid.