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.
POST OCCUPY CENTRAL - DAY 151:
Full coverage of the day’s events on 16-05
2017 ticks for Woo and Tsang
It's hard to tell how the political reform exercise will end.
But no matter what the outcome is, the SAR's next chief executive will be elected in 2017 - either by universal suffrage among candidates chosen by a nominating committee, or by 1,200 members of the Election Committee, should the reform plan be vetoed.
Various names have occasionally popped up, and political watchers couldn't have missed two recent episodes.
First, tycoon Peter Woo Kwong- ching will complete the handover of his HK$300 billion business empire to his son after the general meeting of Wharf Holdings on Friday.
Why is he choosing this moment to do so?
The 68-year-old may be long in the tooth, but it's difficult to find among his peers an example of someone who retires at such an age to pass on the family business to the second generation.
Coincidentally or not, Woo appeared in the recent edition of socialite magazine Hong Kong Tatler, portrayed as an energetic man excelling academically and being active in sports during his years at the University of Cincinnati.
The eight-page feature offered a rare insight into the personal side of the man best known to the public as chairman of a conglomerate that owns Harbour City in Tsim Sha Tsui and Times Square in Causeway Bay.
In the interview, Woo said he plays tennis regularly and is a qualified deep- sea diver. But what caught the eye the most was a photo of him playing basketball with students during a visit to a local secondary school.
Woo will be 70 when the next chief executive election rolls around. In politics, anything goes. Will his situation change in the next two years to inspire him to make his second attempt at the top post, following his failed bid in 1996?
Don't rule out the possibility.
Another individual garnering attention is Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah, who played stand-up comedian at the Hong Kong Journalists Association's annual gala dinner on Friday.
Poking fun at himself and officials, the mustachioed one attempted to define the kind of relationship he wants the government and public to have.
The jokes echoed well between him and the floor.
Tsang declined the HKJA's invitation to show off his prowess at fencing and kung fu. Instead, he said he would prefer to demonstrate his skills to his two grandchildren - an apparent dig at health chief Ko Wing-man, who was recently accused of trying to fool children as he promoted the political reforms at a public housing estate.
Tsang also chided the government's top spokesman Andrew Fung Wai- kwong, saying he would never quarrel with journalists on Facebook after work. The audience erupted in laughter.
Like Woo, Tsang provided an insight into the lighter side of his personality.
Toward the end of his speech, he quoted fictional superhero Spider-Man as saying that with great power comes great responsibility.
So is Tsang preparing to take it on?
Coconuts
CY Leung dodges questions on plan if majority of Hongkongers oppose election proposal
Hong Kong Chief Executive CY Leung dodged a question yesterday about what the government would do if the majority of the public opposes the political reform package, dismissing it as “hypothetical”… which questions about the future generally tend to be.
His remarks came a day after a joint rolling opinion poll run by three Hong Kong universities showed only 42.5 percent of 1,157 respondents favour the government’s proposal, while 39.5 percent oppose it.
The gap has narrowed significantly, with support for the government now at its lowest level since the poll’s commencement on April 23.
The government is busy running an intense promotional campaign for the plans, which would see candidates for the 2017 chief executive election pre-screened by a Beijing-backed committee.
“[The question] is a hypothetical question… Different polls produce different results, as they asked different questions, and we will make reference from all of them”, Leung said when addressing the Executive Council yesterday morning.
He added that opinion polls only serve as reference for policy making, regardless of their results.
“Some people said the package should be vetoed [by pan-democratic lawmakers]… but what’s the consequence?” he asked.
The chief executive – mocked with the moniker “689” by his opponents in reference to the number of votes he received to claim Hong Kong’s top job in 2012 – urged Hongkongers to envision when citizens would see “the next chance for everyone to vote” instead of having their leader selected through the current system of the 1,200-member committee.
Yet the election committee will still serve as a pre-screening mechanism under the government’s proposal.
Leung was also asked whether he thought former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa’s comment that opponents of the Chinese Communist Party would be excluded from the election had affected the most recent poll.
“I would not analyse on what is the relationship between the poll result and the recent public comments and events,” he said, according to the SCMP.
So no hypothetical or retrospective questions then.
Got it. What's your favourite colour, CY?
His remarks came a day after a joint rolling opinion poll run by three Hong Kong universities showed only 42.5 percent of 1,157 respondents favour the government’s proposal, while 39.5 percent oppose it.
The gap has narrowed significantly, with support for the government now at its lowest level since the poll’s commencement on April 23.
The government is busy running an intense promotional campaign for the plans, which would see candidates for the 2017 chief executive election pre-screened by a Beijing-backed committee.
“[The question] is a hypothetical question… Different polls produce different results, as they asked different questions, and we will make reference from all of them”, Leung said when addressing the Executive Council yesterday morning.
He added that opinion polls only serve as reference for policy making, regardless of their results.
“Some people said the package should be vetoed [by pan-democratic lawmakers]… but what’s the consequence?” he asked.
The chief executive – mocked with the moniker “689” by his opponents in reference to the number of votes he received to claim Hong Kong’s top job in 2012 – urged Hongkongers to envision when citizens would see “the next chance for everyone to vote” instead of having their leader selected through the current system of the 1,200-member committee.
Yet the election committee will still serve as a pre-screening mechanism under the government’s proposal.
Leung was also asked whether he thought former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa’s comment that opponents of the Chinese Communist Party would be excluded from the election had affected the most recent poll.
“I would not analyse on what is the relationship between the poll result and the recent public comments and events,” he said, according to the SCMP.
So no hypothetical or retrospective questions then.
Got it. What's your favourite colour, CY?
US congressmen suffer CY Leung silent treatment when denying involvement in Umbrella Movement
Matt Salmon and CY Leung during last week's visit
A pair of US congressmen said they were given the silent treatment by Hong Kong Chief Executive CY Leung when they denied the country had any involvement in the Umbrella Movement while in Hong Kong last week.
Republican Matt Salmon and Democrat Alan Lowenthal came to Hong Kong as part of a parliamentary Asia-Pacific delegation. The May 8 meeting with Leung was jointly arranged by the US State Department and the Hong Kong government.
Salmon said that during the meeting he guaranteed Leung that the United States was not involved in last year’s pro-democracy protests or the Umbrella Movement in any way.
But Lowenthal said Leung simply responded with silence.
During last year’s protests, Leung repeatedly claimed he had evidence of foreign influences in Hong Kong, which he promised to expose it at an “appropriate time”.
No concrete evidence has yet been revealed, however.
The US officials said they also asked about the possibility of compromising on the election proposals, with Salmon concluding that such opportunities have long since passed.
“It was clear to me that there is no room for any negotiation…and that going forward, it’s take it or leave it,” he said, according to the .
An official statement from the Chief Executive's office says Leung reiterated that the proposals for the 2017 election strictly comply with the Basic Law and the decision of China’s Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.
A similar delegation from the UK Parliament was barred from visiting Hong Kong in November last year after Beijing claimed it constituted an act of “interference in Chinese domestic affairs”.
Public support for Hong Kong election proposal falls to lowest level yet
Secretary of Justice Rimsky Yuen promoting the government’s political reform proposal on May 3
The most recent from three Hong Kong universities has revealed that support for the government’s political reform proposal is at its lowest level yet, despite intense campaigning.
The latest results show 42 percent of 1,130 respondents favour the proposal, the lowest level since the polling began on April 23.
Meanwhile, 40 percent of respondents are opposed the plans, up two percentage points in the last fortnight.
The proposal’s net support lies at just two percent following a declining trend since late April.
According to RTHK, Democratic Party lawmaker Emily Lau said the results show the government has achieved nothing with their efforts to promote the proposal on radio, TV and the streets of Hong Kong.
She added that she hopes CY Leung’s administration will inform Beijing that the current proposal is unpopular.
We have a sneaky feeling they might already know that, though.
The plans allow for a one-person, one-vote system for the next chief executive election in 2017, but only two or three vetted candidates will be permitted to stand.
Meanwhile, a separate comparison run by HKU’s public opinion programme suggests that Chief Executive CY Leung has far less public support than his predecessors.
In their equivalent period of tenures, Donald Tsang earned a 66 percent approval rating and Christopher Pattern 57 percent, while Leung lags behind with a shy 43 percent.
Still, it's not a popularity contest, is it?
The Decline of Hong Kong’s Police
It’s becoming the long arm of Chinese law.
Hong Kong's Commissioner of Police Andy Tsang PHOTO: REUTERS
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 editorKevin 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.
