POST OCCUPY CENTRAL - DAY 146 (10-05-2015)

Occupy Central

Occupy Central is a civil disobedience movement which began in Hong Kong on September 28, 2014. It calls on thousands of protesters to block roads and paralyse Hong Kong's financial district if the Beijing and Hong Kong governments do not agree to implement universal suffrage for the chief executive election in 2017 and the Legislative Council elections in 2020 according to "international standards." The movement was initiated by Benny Tai Yiu-ting (戴耀廷), an associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, in January 2013.

Umbrella Movement

The Umbrella Movement (Chinese: 雨傘運動; pinyin: yǔsǎn yùndòng) is a loose political movement that was created spontaneously during the Hong Kong protests of 2014. Its name derives from the recognition of the umbrella as a symbol of defiance and resistance against the Hong Kong government, and the united grass-roots objection to the decision of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPCSC) of 31 August.

The movement consists of individuals numbering in the tens of thousands who participated in the protests that began on 28 September 2014, although Scholarism, the Hong Kong Federation of Students, Occupy Central with Love and Peace,  groups are principally driving the demands for the rescission of the NPCSC decision.

Occupy Central site in Causeway Bay was cleared as police moved in  ...

POST OCCUPY CENTRAL - DAY 146:

Full coverage of the day’s events on 10-05

Organizers gather 363,487 signatures favoring reforms



An ongoing signature campaign for political reforms has collected 363,487 names so far, according to the campaign's website today.

Organized by the Alliance for Peace and Democracy, the campaign aims at gathering Hong Kong people's support for the constitutional reform package designed for the election of the next chief executive by “one person, one vote.’’ Proposals were unveiled by the Hong Kong government on April 22.

Among the signers were top government officials including Chief Secretary for Administration Carrie Lam and Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Raymond Tam.

The signature campaign ends on May 17.


Security law `not for Beijing to tighten grip'



The implementation of the national security law is not meant for Beijing to tighten its grip on Hong Kong, said Basic Law Committee deputy director Elsie Leung Oi-sie yesterday.

Leung said that Hongkongers will also be consulted if the law is applied to the SAR as it has to go through local legislation.

Beijing's second draft of national security laws specifically states that the Hong Kong government has the responsibility to ensure such security.

"Some [Hong Kong] people still don't have much understanding on the principle of `one country, two systems' and they have only focused on `two systems' without the principle of `one country,"' Leung told TVB's news program On the Record.

She added the proposed law states the Hong Kong and Macau have a duty to safeguard national security.

But Leung said implementation is not for Beijing to "tighten its grip" on Hong Kong.

"Definitely, it [the implementation of the law] has no such meaning and it has just stated clearly Hong Kong is part of the country," Leung said.

When asked by host Ng King-chun whether the law could prohibit Hongkongers from challenging the Chinese Communist Party's rule, Leung said that if people really have the thoughts and actions to overthrow the leadership and its regime, she believed it is subversion and illegal.

She also believes that the Article 23 bill would cover safeguarding human rights.

Leung believes that political assemblies such as the annual vigil to remember the June 4 crackdown in Victoria Park will not be affected by the law.


Also, National People's Congress local deputy Maria Tam Wai-chu said the national security law is meant to protect the safety of 1.3 billion Chinese people and Hong Kong is not being targeted. "It is usual for a country to require its region to ensure national security," Tam said.

Coconuts

HongKong

The Decline of Hong Kong’s Police
It’s becoming the long arm of Chinese law.




Hong Kong’s police once had a reputation as Asia’s finest. But Andy Tsang, who is retiring this week as Commissioner after four years on the job, has diminished his force’s reputation for professionalism and impartiality by doing Beijing’s bidding.

Mr. Tsang’s tenure began in 2011, and one of his first acts was to lock down Hong Kong University to protect visiting Chinese Vice Premier (now Premier) Li Keqiang from having to pass by journalists and protesters, some of whom were briefly detained by police.

Protecting Chinese-government interests over the rights of critics became a theme of Hong Kong policing. Officers appeared often to overlook the harassment, sometimes violent, of Falun Gong adherents, who are nominally free to operate in Hong Kong but are persecuted on the mainland.

Independent journalists have suffered a spate of violent attacks—the beating of publisher Chen Ping, the daylight stabbing of editor Kevin Lau and the attempted firebombing of the home of pro-democracy tycoon Jimmy Lai, to name a few. Most such cases went unsolved. When arrests were made, police typically found hitmen, not masterminds.

In October men with knives attacked pro-democracy demonstrators in the Mong Kok district over two days, while police seemed to stand down. A week later—after police arrested 47 people (including known “triad” gangsters) and explained their earlier aloofness as the result of poor intelligence—thugs again attacked protest sites, this time in an area where police had cleared barricades hours before. Well-organized mobs surrounded the headquarters of pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, threatening staff and blocking delivery trucks until police eventually intervened.

Matters haven’t improved since the protests ended. Late last year police tried removing two 14-year-olds from their respective parents’ custody after one was detained for demonstrating and the other for drawing flowers in chalk on a wall near a former protest site. A judge rejected one of the petitions in January and police withdrew the other.

In April police tried to give up on an inquiry into pro-government activists caught on camera attacking journalists at a rally last October. Journalists Association chair Sham Yee-lan called the decision “incomprehensible,” and even the city’s Justice Secretary instructed police to “continue the investigation.” This week it emerged that officers had let suspects in the case wear shower caps and face masks when standing for the police line-up.

Along the barricades last year most frontline officers acted with discipline. But Beijing’s authoritarians are increasingly compromising the integrity and honor of Hong Kong’s governing institutions. New Commissioner Stephen Lo can distinguish himself by refusing to use police as a weapon against government critics.