POST OCCUPY CENTRAL - DAY 66 (19-02-2015)

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 66: 

Full coverage of the day’s events

Beijing’s electoral plan has ‘fatal defect’: Leung Ka-lau

Leung Ka-lau, a legislator representing the medical functional constituency, said he will vote against the government’s proposal on political reform, heeding the calls of people from the medical fraternity.

He said a majority of people in the medical profession disapprove of the current reform framework that has been mapped out by the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress.

Leung said he had a distributed a questionnaire to over 15,000 registered doctors, dentists and medical interns, and received a response from more than 3,000 people.

The survey showed that 55.1 percent of the respondents were unhappy with Beijing’s reform proposal, he said, according to the Hong Kong Economic Journal. 

Civic nomination of candidates for the chief executive election drew the most support among three methods put on the table, garnering a 49.4 percent vote, Leung said. The present threshold of support from one-eighth of the election committee members to join the race was the most favored choice if civic nomination is not possible.

The so-called Aug. 31 framework requires the support of at least 50 percent of the committee members for a candidate to be shortlisted for the 2017 chief executive election. A committee member can nominate more than one candidate but there can be only two or three nominees at most.

Such a mechanism has a “fatal defect” of potentially screening out the most capable candidates, said Leung. The issue is about the system, not a matter of an individual political stance, he said.

Leung said Hong Kong people should consider “one person, one vote” as a means to defending the free mechanism in society.

However, this end cannot be met under the Aug. 31 framework, he said.

Translation by Vey Wong

Govt mishandled Occupy movement, says new study

The Hong Kong government was deficient on four counts with regard to the handling of the Occupy pro-democracy movement last year, according to Civil Society Joint Action, a group founded by some academics and professionals.

A study conducted by the group concluded that the government failed to analyze the social situation correctly during the first phase of consultation on constitutional reform, the Hong Kong Economic Journal reported.

The consultation method in turn exacerbated the internal conflicts in society, it said. Meanwhile, the way the police handled the protests was questionable. 

The fourth “deficiency” pertains to moves by the administrative agencies, and Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying himself, toward signature campaigns that were full of political characteristics, the group said.

Robert Chung, director of public opinion program at the University of Hong Kong and the lead writer of the report, said the study is even more comprehensive than what the government came up with in a similar review after the Occupy movement.

The government has maintained an aggressive attitude in the wake of the movement, and has yet to show any reconciliation gestures to the public, Chung added.

The group urged the government to review its methods for the second round of consultation on political reform, in order to restore trust in the process.

Civil Society Joint Action will organize a forum later this month to enable a public discussion among political parties, academia and the youth.


Translation by Vey Wong

Leung inaction could trigger an Occupy the Mall movement

Even the most naïve person would not regard the chaos that took place at New Town Plaza in Sha Tin on Sunday as an isolated case.

In fact, it was the continuation of similar chaos that broke out in Tuen Mun the week before, and both of these spontaneous actions, spearheaded by local residents, can be traced back to the “shopping parades” in Mong Kok, the Umbrella movement and even as far back as the protests at the beginning of last year against gray-goods traders and the individual visit scheme for mainlanders.

However, the protests in Sha Tin and Tuen Mun in the past two weeks were unparalleled in terms of their scale and the degree of ferocity.

In fact, they signaled the beginning of a new mode of “direct action” by Hongkongers, and the force they have unleashed is unstoppable.

What happened in Sha Tin was strongly reminiscent of the “shopping parades” that have been underway in Mong Kok for the past two months.

There was a strong police presence at every corner of the shopping mall to prevent chaos, and some shops even had to shut their doors.

Armed with prior intelligence, police took a lot of pre-emptive measures to keep things under control, such as arresting protest leaders beforehand and threatening social activists.

However, all these efforts proved in vain, as the protests in Sha Tin turned out to be well-organized and effective even without any conventional leadership.

It seems our fellow citizens have finally awoken to the fact that they can no longer count on hypocritical politicians.

Instead, they must rely on themselves and their own direct action.

Two relatively new concepts can explain the spontaneous outbursts in the past two weeks: “direct action” and “lone wolf pack action”.

These two new forms of social activism have already proven to be formidable and are poised to become the mainstream in the post-Occupy era.

The protest against parallel traders that took place in Tuen Mun was organized by Civic Passion in accordance with the law.

However, the organization took a back seat and let the “lone wolf pack” take center stage and escalate the action after the protest reached its finishing point outside Tuen Mun’s Trend Plaza.

Since the protest was officially over and what happened afterward was entirely spontaneous, leaders of Civic Passion could not be held legally accountable for the subsequent clashes.

The police could have banned the protest in Sha Tin if an application for permission to stage one had been submitted, but none was, it turned out.

Having learned from the Tuen Mun experience, the “lone wolf pack” was able to act spontaneously on its own in New Town Plaza.

The scene and the effect of the two actions, especially the one in Sha Tin, were stunning.

An online video clip showed that thousands of people who occupied the foyer of the four-storey shopping mall shouted slogans at the police like their counterparts in Mong Kok.

It is obvious that the mass resistance movement in Hong Kong has assumed a new form and hundreds of thousands of local residents are joining in.

From what I observed at New Town Plaza on Sunday, at least a thousand people took part in the protest.

And even though there was a heavy presence of police at the mall, they just couldn’t stop the crowd and had to resort to pepper spray in the end.

It shows that the police, no matter how intimidating they might be, still have their limitations when handling indoor protests, because the protesters are often mobile and elusive and can disperse and regroup within a short period of time.

Such protests will be even more difficult to tackle if they take place simultaneously in different shopping malls, and not even the People’s Liberation Army can handle that kind of situation!

Perhaps Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying is the only high-ranking official who is not aware of the looming crisis.

In fact, he is already on vacation, and none of the senior officials in the administration cared to respond to the incident.

Most of our professional bureaucrats are just too lazy to reflect on these incidents and suggest precautionary measures.

It seems all Leung’s administration can do is assume things are back to normal and keep burying its head in the sand until the next outburst.

It doesn’t take an expert to figure out the only way to stem the tide of parallel traders is to stop issuing multiple-entry permits to mainlanders and cap the number of tourists from the mainland.

These measures are long overdue, and the people of Hong Kong are getting increasingly impatient.

Such measures might undermine some vested interests, but that is a necessary price to pay if the social stability of Hong Kong is to be maintained.


– Contact us at english@hkej.com

Yuen Long fruit vendor in one-man protest against mainlanders

A fruit vendor in Yuen Long said he’s had enough of mainland shoppers who play havoc on his merchandise.

So on Monday morning he put up cardboard signs at his fruit stall that read: “We don’t sell to mainland people” and “Don’t touch the fruits”.

A stranger later came to his stall, seized one of the signs, tore it apart and walked away.

Wah-gor, who has been keeping the fruit stall on Yau Sun Street in Yuen Long for three years, was unfazed. He said he will continue to refuse serving mainland customers because, he said, they are rude.

“I’m not afraid,” he said, adding that he will make more signs and put them in prominent places in his stall to keep them off.

He continued: “99.9 percent of mainland people like to poke the fruits whether they’re buying or not. And they accuse me of duping them for selling five pieces for HK$15 and say other stalls are selling at HK$10 for five. They’re such a nuisance.”

Wah-gor complained that Yuen Long is now no different from Sheung Shui and Tuen Mun, which are swamped with mainland visitors.

He has a lot of complaints against mainlanders. He said he has seen them urinating in public near his stall or parents bringing their daughters into the men’s room.

He said life in the city has been affected by the influx of mainland visitors who refuse to behave properly, obey laws and follow social rules while the government is turning a deaf ear to the problem.

The vendor’s action became a hot topic of discussion on social media with some netizens supporting him and others criticizing the way he treats customers.

One netizen, who apparently is also from Yuen Long, said the vendor is rude to everyone who touches his merchandise without buying, whether they’re local customers or mainlanders.


– Contact us at english@hkej.com