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.
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 - DAY 78: Full coverage of the day’s events
Hundreds of police to clear Hong Kong's last pro-democracy protest site
Force's low popularity rating after pro-democracy protests fail to deter police recruits
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 14 December, 2014
The last embers of the 2½-month Occupy Central campaign could be stubbed out tomorrow after police announced details of the clearance of the last protest site left standing.
The clearance of Causeway Bay will start soon after 9.30am and roads near the Yee Wo Street camp, including Jardine's Bazaar, Sugar Street and part of Gloucester Road, will be closed.
"If it goes smoothly, we hope the occupied roads could be reopened in the afternoon," said Steven Hui Chun-tak, chief superintendent of the police public relations branch.
It is understood that hundreds of police officers, rather than the thousands called up in Admiralty last week and Mong Kok last month, will be deployed. Hui urged protesters to leave voluntarily and said they would have little time to pack belongings when the clearance began.
Only a few dozen protesters remained at the site yesterday. Some assembled their own version of the "Lennon Wall", the landmark in the Admiralty camp where people left messages of support for the protests.
WATCH: 75-day time lapse of the protests in Causeway Bay
Amid warnings from Occupy co-founder Benny Tai Yiu-ting that frustrated protesters could turn more radical, Hui said more officers would be deployed to counter the latest protest tactic, so-called shopping trips.
The "shopping" exercises have sprung up since the Mong Kok clearance and see protesters stand or move slowly through crowded shopping areas. On Friday, protesters defied police warnings as they sang carols dressed in choir garb while holding pro-democracy banners at Times Square in Causeway Bay.
Yesterday, a government spokesman revealed that the organisers of the annual New Year countdown at Times Square had withdrawn their plan for this year's celebration. Hui said police had not been consulted on the matter.
Separately, images of clashes between "Asia's finest" and protesters seemed not to have put potential officers off a career in the force. The first recruitment day since the 75-day sit-in at Admiralty ended saw potential recruits crowd into Auxiliary Police Headquarters in Kowloon Bay.
A police spokesman said more than 1,500 applications were received yesterday for posts at various ranks, slightly up on the 1,400 received at last year's winter recruitment day.
For Lingnan University philosophy graduate Matthew Chan, 23, Occupy was one of the reasons that spurred him to join the force.
"There were some parts [in the movement that] the police didn't handle well. So even more so it's important to have people who want to work on those things to join the force," he said. "I think the rule of law is so important - it needs to be upheld."
Another potential recruit agreed that Occupy had not put her off policing.
"A city cannot be without the police and protective services," said the 28-year-old woman, who works in information technology. "Protective services are never a popular vocation - I'm not joining the force because it's a popular job."
Jeffrey Ho, 28, who graduated with a degree in forensic-science research in Australia, said he had always wanted to join the police.
He said officers needed to obey commands from their superiors or else "it wouldn't be a police force".
He said if he were in a situation where he thought orders were not appropriate, he would discuss it with his superiors and try to come up with a better way.
A police spokesman said the force expected to meet its target of recruiting 230 probationary inspectors and 1,100 constables by the end of the fiscal year in March.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Police reveal details of 'final' Occupy clearance
Occupy groups to start 'non-cooperation movement' as follow-up to mass protests
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 14 December, 2014
Students and civic groups are launching a "non-cooperation movement" - urging people to delay paying their public-housing rent and to pay tax bills in small and symbolic amounts - as an offshoot of the Occupy prodemocracy protests.
Alex Chow Yong-kang, secretary general of the Federation of Students, said yesterday the actions were legal and busy workers unable to join previous protests could take part.
"Occupy is taking on different forms. While the government has no timetable for universal suffrage, we do have a timetable to fight for it and challenge the legitimacy of the government," Chow said.
Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung called on the public not to follow the groups' suggestions, saying it was not "a wise act" and he would not agree to "any suggestion to act in breach of the law".
The groups' call came after police last week dismantled the Occupy stronghold in Admiralty.
Police planned to clear the last remaining camp in Causeway Bay today, with about 400 officers set to move in on the 100 metre-long site and another 400 to 600 on standby, a police source said.
Protesters were to be given 30 minutes to pack up and go before police started clearing the site at 9.30am.
"We expect little resistance," the source said. "It should take no more than three hours."
Under the non-cooperation plan, Hongkongers are urged to express their displeasure with the government by splitting their tax payments into small sums. Tenants of public housing flats are being urged to delay paying their monthly rent until the last possible moment.
The groups said salaries tax and rent were chosen as targets because they were unhappy that the government was spending taxpayers' money on "white elephant infrastructure projects" and land policies that benefited developers.
Franklen Choi Kin-shing, a social sciences lecturer, suggested that people, while paying their full tax bill, should split payments into cheques for sums of HK$689 or HK$6.89 - a reference to the number of people on the election committee who voted for Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying.
There are 1.5 million taxpayers and more than two million public housing tenants in Hong Kong.
Yim Pik-fan, spokeswoman for the Alliance for Defending Grassroots Housing Rights, said many tenants were middle-aged or elderly, and might not see a connection between paying rent and fighting for democracy. But she said the alliance would still promote the idea among residents, and aimed to start the first effort on December 31.
Leticia Lee See-yin, convenor of the Justice Alliance, an anti-Occupy group, said the students' plan would only "bring trouble to civil servants" and waste administrative resources.
On the eve of the Causeway Bay clearance operation, all but a few of about 30 protesters who have camped near the Sogo department store for the past 11 weeks planned to stay today to bear the legal consequences of civil disobedience.
Staying until the last moment has a special meaning for janitor Man Wah, who has camped in Causeway Bay since the start of the protests.
"It may be only another 30 minutes, but I want to stay with this community we've built from scratch until the very last moment," said the 47-year-old, who has been running a supplies booth on the site.
Packing was mostly finished yesterday. Self-defence gear had been removed and remaining supplies were donated to charities, said Orphee Leung, who helped build the study area. "We won't wait for police to arrest us. Now is not the time yet," he said.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as 'Non-cooperation' is protesters' next gambit
Anti-Occupy activist Leticia Lee looks ahead to her next fight
As the Occupy campaign winds down with the Causeway Bay protest site due to be cleared today, for anti-Occupy activist Leticia Lee See-yin, the fight "for justice" is not over yet.
PUBLISHED : Monday, 15 December, 2014, 6:37am
UPDATED : Monday, 15 December, 2014, 6:37am
Post Occupy, Hong Kong must confront the hatred that poisons - in our own hearts
Alice Wu says after Occupy, we must root out the hatred that seems entrenched now in the community - by taking a hard look at ourselves
Clearing the streets will not clear the pain and suffering that have been inflicted on this city. We are all bleeding; no one has been spared. And neither is anyone singularly at fault.
We've lost our community. Long before the umbrella movement, the threads of civil society had begun to unravel. Some tried to warn us. One person, in particular, has been doing so for years. In fact, his annual Christmas messages plotted our unravelling.
The archbishop of the Hong Kong Anglican Church, Dr Paul Kwong - someone some of us have learned to love to hate, and hate to love - asked us, in 2009, to notice our easy acceptance of the not-in-my-backyard mentality; in 2010, to acknowledge our own role - our selfishness - in widening the wealth gap; in 2011, to be aware of our growing preference for mutual disrespect; in 2012, to see the futility in both improper governance and sensationalism, and the danger both have in propelling society into the "periphery of inhumanity"; and, last year, to return to reconciliation, civility and dialogue against the tendency to reach for hate and violence. Self-awareness is a difficult thing to ask, indeed.
It's easy to shut our ears to content we deem unsavoury. And, as a result, we've failed to see that hate does beget hate, and violence, violence. We let differences become a breeding ground for animosity and hatred. Tens of thousands may have been called to the streets to occupy with "love and peace", but we're now left with the organisers' love's labour's lost; what will remain with us are the anguish, hate and the violence that permeated well beyond the Occupy skirmishes.
We have nestled too comfortably in our echo chambers of confirmation bias, found excuses to shut out dissent, to silence and drown out differences. We've taken our grievances as entitlements to unleash our anguish on our neighbours and friends. We've failed to see that we weren't going for the root of our problems, but for each other's jugular.
We desperately now, as a community, need to rebuild what we have, as a community, destroyed. We have to reclaim normalcy, not as fools in sectioned-off communities separated by the colour of our ribbons, but as friends learning again to live together.
This is our only way out, and we must listen to those who have suffered from unadulterated hate and violence. Journalist Kevin Lau Chun-to, who was stabbed in February, penned a moving plea this month to not let hatred take hold of us. For someone who has experienced anguish unimaginable to most, Lau's plea must not be taken lightly.
We must dig out the weeds of hate from our community, as painful as it may be, by being brutally honest and harshly introspective. Our extenuating circumstances call for restraint from accentuating the divisive lines we've drawn. We must not let hatred occupy our hearts and minds.
Not all need be lost; if we learn how easily we fell apart, how easily we let differences turn into hate, we can learn to, as James Thurber once said, "not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness".
Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Looking inward
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