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Hong Kong government bails on talks as students vow more protests
Washington Post - October 10, 2014
That was an unacceptable threat, Hong Kong's number two official Carrie Lam said. The announcement set the stage for further confrontation between protesters and the government here and could breathe new life into street protests that had been dwindling steadily this week.
Student leaders immediately responded by redoubling their calls for people to return to the streets on Friday evening to put fresh pressure on the government, and, shortly after the government's announcement, several thousand gathered at the main protest site.
The first round of talks had been scheduled for Friday. But the appeal to bolster the occupation of the streets during the talks was deemed a deal-killer by the government.
"I am afraid that is making people's daily lives into a bargaining chip for the meeting," Ms Lam said at a press conference. "We cannot accept the linking of illegal activities to whether or not to talk." She also said the government side is not prepared to discuss the protesters' basic demand for democracy.
That may be the biggest sticking point – her insistence that students not contest the Chinese Communist Party's ruling in August setting out its interpretation of Hong Kong's mini-constitution, the Basic Law, and detailing the rules that would govern the election of the territory's next chief executive in 2017. Those rules effectively gave Beijing and its loyalists in Hong Kong the power to choose who can be a candidate in those elections.
Protesters want to open up the nominating process and are also demanding the resignation of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying.
"We have stated again and again that political reform has to be under the Basic Law framework and the recent explanation made by the National People's Congress Standing Committee," Ms Lam said.
She said protest leaders had failed to listen to "rational voices" urging them to end their campaign of civil disobedience, adding that the "illegal occupation of the streets must end".
Student leaders accused the government of backing out of the talks because it felt the pressure was lessening.
"I feel like the government is saying that if there are fewer people on the streets, they can cancel the meeting," said Alex Chow, head of the Hong Kong Federation of Students. "Students urge people who took part in the civil disobedience to go out on the streets again to occupy."
Mr Chow accused the government of having been insincere about the dialogue all along. "We are not asking the government to respond to us by solving all the problems at once," he said.
"They could give some instructions or administrative work to give a blueprint of how all the constitutional reform problems could be settled, but right up to this moment the government has still not given us a concrete proposal to solve the problem."
Sebastian Veg, director of the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China, called the government's decision "terribly irresponsible". But he said he thinks that the students need to devise a new strategy, given the frustration in some quarters with the disruptions to daily life the protests have caused – perhaps retreating to their campuses for a period and setting an ultimatum for the government to offer some meaningful proposals.
"This would highlight the moral bankruptcy of this embattled government and preserve the students' moral high ground," he said. "When the government acts like children, the students are called upon to act like the only adults in the room – as they have done so far."
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