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Protesters clash with Hong Kong police amid fresh push for reforms
Sydney Morning Herald - December 1, 2014
Chaos erupted as commuters made their way to work, with hundreds of protesters surrounding Admiralty Centre, which houses offices and retail outlets, in a tense stand-off with police. The central government offices and the legislature were forced to close in the morning, as were scores of shops.
The latest flare-up, during which police charged protesters with batons and pepper spray, marked an escalation in the civil disobedience movement. It also underscored the frustration of protesters at Beijing's refusal to budge on electoral reforms and grant greater democracy to the former British colony.
"The atmosphere in Admiralty is very different now after the clashes last night," said Jessica Lam, 20, who returned to the protest site on Monday morning. "It has become very tense, like back to the early days when the protest just started."
The democracy movement represents one of the biggest threats for China's Communist Party leadership since Beijing's bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy student protests in and around Tiananmen Square.
Hundreds of riot police scattered the crowds in several rounds of heated clashes overnight, forcing protesters back with pepper spray and batons as some tried to scramble over walls in a crush of bodies on a highway outside the government headquarters.
Scores of volunteer medics attended to numerous injured, some who lay unconscious and others with blood streaming from head gashes. Police said at least 40 arrests were made.
Hong Kong's security secretary, Lai Tung-kwok, defended the use of force: "The police have to take resolute actions, they have no choice... it is their duty to restore law and order."
As police tackled the running battles in Admiralty, tensions escalated across the harbour in the gritty working-class district of Mong Kok, which had been the scene of violent clashes in recent weeks before the clearance of a large protest encampment from a major road there last Wednesday.
The protesters are demanding free elections for the city's next leader in 2017 rather than the vote between pre-screened candidates that Beijing has said it would allow.
The clashes came after student leaders called on activists to escalate their protests and surround government headquarters, galvanising supporters to make their way to the buildings in Admiralty, next to Hong Kong's central business district and some of the world's most expensive real estate.
Despite several waves of clampdowns, crowds of protesters, many in protective goggles and body armour, refused to leave the area and continued to press against police lines, chanting "We want universal suffrage". They threw bottles, helmets and umbrellas at police as tensions simmered into mid-morning.
Scores of demonstrators held up umbrellas, which have become a symbol of the pro-democracy movement, to protect themselves from the pepper spray and batons.
In London, a group of British politicians investigating Britain's relations with Hong Kong have been told China will not allow them into the former colony.
The foreign affairs committee, a panel of MPs who scrutinise the Foreign Office's work, is looking into Britain's relations with the Chinese special administrative region 30 years on from the 1984 Joint Declaration, which set out the terms of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong. The committee had planned to visit Hong Kong before the end of the year as part of its inquiry.
Richard Ottaway, who chairs the cross-party panel, said he would on Monday call for an emergency debate in Parliament on the situation.
"I have been informed by the Chinese embassy that if we attempt to travel to Hong Kong we will be refused entry," Mr Ottaway said. "The Chinese government are acting in an overtly confrontational manner in refusing us access to do our job." (Reuters, AFP)
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