Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Standoff continues
Hong Kong riot policemen clash with student protesters in the Mong Kok area early Saturday after the pro-democracy demonstrators recaptured a large part of the neighborhood. City leaders said later in the day that they would hold talks with the demonstrators Tuesday, but a similar offer was abruptly dropped a week ago.
HONG KONG — The city’s government said Saturday that it would hold talks with student protest leaders on Tuesday, the start of a formal dialogue that could ease tensions over nearly three weeks of demonstrations that the police have been unable to shut down.
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief secretary and No. 2 official, announced the meeting Saturday evening after thousands of protesters recaptured a large swath of the neighborhood of Mong Kok, which they have blockaded since late September. On Friday night, police officers, with batons and pepper spray, struggled to control a crowd of thousands that had mushroomed after the police tried to shrink the protest area earlier in the day.
In his first public comment since the start of the Occupy protests, Hong Kong’s police commission- er, Andy Tsang, condemned “radical” protesters for charging the police line and said they had broken the law by gathering in Mong Kok on Friday.
“I have a message from the bottom of my heart: These illegal acts are hurting Hong Kong, hurting our society,” he told reporters Saturday. He did not answer questions.
The police said 15 officers had been injured and 26 protesters had been arrested as of Saturday evening, with a tense standoff continuing.
The scheduling of the talks with the Hong Kong Federation of Students, one of the groups leading the protests, comes a week after the government pulled out of another planned dialogue. That move followed a news conference by the protesters in which they vowed to escalate pressure on the government by blockading government buildings and engaging in other acts of civil disobedience. The protesters are calling for direct popular election of the city’s leader, the chief executive, who is now chosen by a pro-Beijing committee.
It is unclear whether the new dialogue, expected to last two hours and to be moderated by a university president, will cool the dissent. Lam reiterated the government’s demand that any proposal for changes in election law comply with a ruling in August by China’s legislature as well as with the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s de facto constitution.
That ruling from Beijing said that while Hong Kong residents would be able to vote for the chief executive starting in 2017, the power to nominate candidates would continue to reside with the 1,200- member committee. Critics have said that such restrictions would not give voters a real choice of candidates, and a band of Hong Kong lawmakers have vowed to block legislation to make such changes.
Dissatisfaction with Beijing’s control of Hong Kong’s leadership erupted in a week-long student strike last month that eventually led to the Occupy protests, inspired by the Occupy Central With Love and Peace movement. Although protest leaders initially promised nonviolence, protesters have become more radical in recent days, agitated by apparent acts of police brutality.
Chan Kin-man, a co- founder of the Occupy movement, said in an article published in a local newspaper Saturday that protesters should rethink their confrontational tactics.