PRO-DEMOCRACY activists announced the start of a “new era of civil disobedience” on the night of August 31st, after China’s top legislature laid down restrictive guidelines on the kind of elections that are allowed in Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous territory. Officials in Beijing had promised to allow the election of Hong Kong’s next leader, in 2017, through universal suffrage. With the announcement China has clarified that there is a catch, a big one: the government sees itself as being under no obligation to allow open nominations for the election’s candidates. Before the announcement, Chen Zuoer, one of the officials who helped negotiate Hong Kong’s handover to mainland China back in 1997, had warned that “blood will be shed” if their opponents refuse to back down.
In a show of defiance, an alliance of activists who support fully open elections held a rally on Sunday night to declare that it would launch waves of protests, culminating in the occupation of the city’s main financial district. Their movement has been many months in the making; they call it “Occupy Central with Love and Peace”. It was first proposed nearly two years ago by Benny Tai, an associate law professor at the University of Hong Kong, in anticipation of a disappointing official interpretation of “universal suffrage”—just like the one that the central government has now given them.
Police arrested at least 22 people during protests that began on Sunday night and carried through Monday morning. The student-union president at the Chinese University of Hong Kong has announced a strike; students there will have a rally of their own on September 4th around a replica of the “Goddess of Democracy” statue that became famous for its appearance in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Other universities are expected to see strikes of their own announced in the next few days.
Many of the participants at Sunday’s rally despair at convincing the bureaucrats in Beijing to change their position—but they feel they need to put up a fight anyway. “Normal protests are no longer useful,” in the words of Agnes Chow Ting, a student protester. She led a failed attempt after the rally to “ambush” a delegation of officials from the central government.
Such actions may attract international attention but indeed, they are less than likely to sway decision-makers in Beijing. Li Fei, a deputy secretary-general of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, told local politicians on September 1st that the committee believes Hong Kong’s police will be capable of handling any disturbance that might be caused by “a small group of people seeking to undermine Hong Kong”, as he characterises the Occupy movement.
Hong Kong’s current chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, was picked for the role in 2012 by a 1,200-member “election committee”. A reliable majority of that committee were Hong Kongers who will ever be glad to demonstrate loyalty to their counterparts in Beijing.
via Democracy for Hong Kong: Unyielding | The Economist.
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