The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Protesters threaten action over reforms
Hong Kong: Student group ponders strike action
Pro-democracy protesters have demanded that Hong Kong’s leader meet them and threatened wider actions if he does not, after he said China would not budge in its decision to limit voting reforms in the Asian financial hub.
Chief executive Leung Chun-ying’s rejection of the demands dashed hopes for a quick resolution to the five-day stand-off which has blocked city streets, forcing some schools and offices to close.
The Hong Kong Federation of Students, the organiser of the university class boycotts that led to the street protests, said it was considering various options, including widening the protests, pushing for a labour strike and possibly occupying a government building.
Mr Leung’s blunt rejection of the demands from the students, whoarepushing for him to step down, comes as no surprise. The Chinese communist leadership is wary of conciliatory moves that might embolden dissidents and separatists on the mainland.
Hong Kong police continued a light-handed approach to the protests, having shifted tactics on Sunday after their use of tear gas and pepper spray had failed to drive out tens of thousands of people occupying streets near the government headquarters. The sit-ins instead spread to the financial district and other areas.
The protesters want a reversal of a decision by China’s government in August that a pro- Beijing panel will screen all candidates in the territory’s first direct elections, scheduled for 2017 – a move they view as reneging on a promise that the chief executive would be chosen through “universal suffrage”.
Occupy Central, a wider civil disobedience movement, said in a tweet that the deadline set by the prodemocracy protesters includes a demand for genuine democracy and forMr Leung’s resignation.
China’s government has condemned the protests as illegal. So far, however, it has not overtly intervened, leavingHongKong authorities to handle the situation under the “one country, two systems” arrangement that guaranteed the former British colony separate legal and economic systems and western-style civil liberties after China took control in 1997.