Hong Kong police use tear gas as protests escalate

Tear gas drifted across Hong Kong’s financial centre yesterday as thousands of demonstrators faced off against police in protest against moves by Beijing to restrict electoral reform in the territory.

Watching street demonstrations, tear gas and baton charges in Hong Kong is an astonishing sight in what is one of the world’s leading financial hubs and a famously orderly place.

Volunteers handed out wet towels and umbrellas outside MTR subway stations in downtown Hong Kong as tens of thousands of protesters, dressed in plastic capes and wearing goggles, raised their hands as a sign their protest was peaceful, while police in full riot gear fired tear gas pellets and attempted to break up the swell of mostly student demonstrators into smaller groups.

“The situation is very bad. Can you believe the police fired tear gas at us? I was crying, not just from tear gas. We came down to support the students, to support Hong Kong. We love Hong Kong,” commented one young woman, who said she was an office worker.

She was in the area between Admiralty, near the government offices, and Wan Chai, as the chaos on the streets spread to the shopping district of Causeway Bay and across the harbour to Kowloon.

“This will go on tomorrow, and for a lot longer after that. Do you think they will use rubber bullets?” Her partner was overwhelmed by events. “All we want to do is choose our chief executive.” Most of the demonstrators were exhausted after days of protest.

Handover terms

Under the terms of the handover of the former crown colony to China in 1997, universal suffrage was set out as an eventual goal, and Hong Kong was supposed to allow its citizens to pick its top official, the chief executive, in a poll in three years’ time.

However, last month Beijing decided to limit nominations for elections for chief executive in 2017 to a handful of candidates vetted by it, prompting an escalation in protests.

While promising a fresh round of public consultation, the territory’s chief executive CY Leung described Beijing’s decision as “legally binding”.

The protests put Mr Leung in a difficult position as he must work out a way of defusing the situation without alienating public opinion and making one of the world’s most important financial centres look like a battle zone.

The most prominent protest group has been Occupy Central with Peace and Love, which brought forward its plan to lock down the Central district after three days of student demonstrations brought thousands on to the streets. Some of the biggest names in the territory’s democracy movement were on the ground in Central.

Media mogul Jimmy Lai, whose Next Media outlets are critical of Beijing and which are currently under investigation for donations to pan-democrat parties, donned a surgical mask and goggles and joined the demonstrations.

"This is about making sacrifices. Without sacrifice, we cannot have civil disobedience," he was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post. "The most important thing is that we use love and peace. The only power we have is moral power and if we become violent, we will lose this moral power."

The Hong Kong Federation of Students is urging its members to boycott classes for a second week.

One of the icons of the protests is Joshua Wong, the 17-year-old leader of the Scholarism movement, who was held for 40 hours without charge until courts overturned his detention saying they could find nothing to justify it.