| Home > North-East Asia >> Hong Kong | |
Clashes as Hong Kong police crack down on protesters
Sydney Morning Herald - October 15, 2014
As their operation to reopen blocked roads continued into their third straight day, police said they arrested 45 protesters, using pepper spray on those who resisted, as they cleared barricades from a major harbour-front road near the offices of Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying.
But in what threatened to inflame tensions and amplify mistrust of police among already-edgy demonstrators, footage emerged of police officers repeatedly kicking and beating a protester, sparking promises of an official investigation, as well as outrage from the wider public.
The footage, aired on Hong Kong broadcaster TVB before spreading widely online, appeared to show at least seven officers kicking and beating a protester for several minutes while he lay prone on the ground, after he was dragged into a dark corner near the protest site.
The protester, identified as Ken Tsang, a social worker and member of the democratic Civic Party, was later photographed by his lawyer with bruising and lacerations on his face and body. Mr Tsang is known to security officials, having been bundled away for heckling former Chinese President Hu Jintao during Mr Leung's swearing-in ceremony in July 2012.
Civic Party leaders said Mr Tsang's hands were bound behind his back by plastic handcuffs when the incident occurred and they accused police of criminal assault.
Hong Kong Secretary for Security Lai Tung-kwok told reporters that police would investigate the incident, and that officers shown in the video would be stood down.
The barricades targeted during the swift police action on Wednesday were erected only the previous night to counter a broader police operation to reclaim territory occupied by protesters, with authorities showing growing impatience amid an apparent ramp-up of Chinese government pressure to act.
But the operations have had only effect around the edges of major protest sites, with hundreds of tents remaining pitched on a multilane freeway outside the core protest zone outside government headquarters in the Admiralty district.
The Chinese government made its highest-level denunciation yet of the protesters, accusing them of pursuing a conspiracy to challenge Beijing's power over the city.
Zhang Xiaoming, the head of the central government's Liaison Office in Hong Kong, said the movement had engaged in "radical" forms of street confrontations and "provoked" the Chinese government. China's central leadership was "paying very close attention to the current developments," Mr Zhang said, according to state news agency China News Service.
The Communist Party has so far resolutely backed Mr Leung in public. A front-page editorial carried in the party's flagship newspaper, The People's Daily, on Wednesday praised his handling of the protests and said calls for his dismissal were part of a plot to force the government into unacceptable concessions.
The scale and length of the protests, a civil disobedience movement demanding that China stages unfettered elections for Hong Kong's top political leader, has divided public opinion and prompted sporadic counter-demonstrations from pro-establishment supporters.
"We'll leave as soon as the government gives us an answer that satisfies us. I'm confident not many citizens want to spend so much time sleeping in the streets," pro-democracy protester Kyle Yeung, 24, told the South China Morning Post. "If the police push us away, we'll leave and regroup somewhere else."
See also:
 |