Breaking News "Occupy Central" - The criminals are surrendering to Law

[Keel]

Hong Kong Protests: Occupy Central Founders to Surrender to Police
Pro-Democracy Movement Leaders Urge Student Protesters to Retreat

ENLARGE Police and protesters clashed in Admiralty, Hong Kong, on Monday. ZUMA PRESS

By FIONA LAW And CHESTER YUNG
Updated Dec. 2, 2014 7:49 a.m. ET


HONG KONG—Three founders of the pro-democracy protest group Occupy Central with Love and Peace called on Tuesday for students to end their occupation of city streets, even as student leaders vowed to continue protests.

The middle-aged leaders of the Occupy movement first raised the idea of using civil disobedience in the former British colony to press for democratic reforms last year, but student protest groups have been at the forefront of the two-month-long street demonstrations—and student leaders on Tuesday quickly rejected the idea of abandoning their encampments.

In an emotional plea on Tuesday, the Occupy leaders said they feared clashes between protesters and police were escalating at a dangerous pace and urged the students to stand down. The Occupy leaders also said they planned to surrender to police on Wednesday over their role in the mass demonstrations.

ENLARGE Hong Kong pro-democracy activists Benny Tai, center, with Chan Kin-man, left, and Chu Yiu-Ming. AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES


“In past few days, we can see the police are increasingly out of control. We don’t know how much more violence they would impose on occupiers. We hope occupiers retreat from the protest sites,” Occupy leader and law professor Benny Tai told a press briefing, jointly attended by the other co-founders of the Occupy group, Chan Kin-man, a sociology professor, and the Rev. Chu Yiu-Ming.

By surrendering to the police, “we will bear the legal consequences and hope the students will retreat,” Mr. Tai said in a prepared statement. Cardinal Joseph Zen, the former head of Hong Kong’s Catholic Church and a core supporter of the Occupy group, said he would surrender to the police together with the trio Wednesday. No pro-democracy lawmakers announced plans to turn themselves in.

Mr. Chu, 70, the eldest of the Occupy leadership trio, tearfully recounted the sorrow he felt over seeing images of police beating young protesters with batons and forcibly dragging away the demonstrators to stop their actions.

“This all made me, this old man, deeply sad. Many times, I knelt down on my knees to pray for God to protect us. And I hope all participants of this movement could safely go home,” he said.

Hong Kong’s Secretary for Security Lai Tung-Kwok said police would handle the Occupy leaders’ surrender according to established police protocol.

“Any persons who intend to turn themselves in because they believed that they had breached the laws, of course, it is welcome,” Mr. Lai said.

Hong Kong authorities have long maintained that the street protests are illegal activities and have sought court injunctions to remove demonstrators from the encampments. Violence has flared in recent days as police have become more assertive in their attempt to clear protesters off the streets.

Earlier this week, police used batons and pepper spray to push back students who had seized control of a street by the Hong Kong government headquarters. More than 200 people have been arrested in the past week. Authorities said dozens of people have been injured in the clashes, including several police officers.

Police cleared one of the three protest sites in the city last week, and were expected to move against the other two sites in the coming days, but student protesters insisted that they would continue their occupation.

Tommy Cheung, a leader of student protest group the Hong Kong Federation of Students, told reporters on Tuesday evening that the students respected the Occupy group’s advice, but he said students wouldn’t surrender their encampments. “We will ultimately bear the legal responsibilities,” he said.


Hong Kong police used pepper spray and batons on pro-democracy protesters heeding a rally call by student leaders. More than 50 people were arrested. The WSJ’s Ramy Inocencio reports.
Joshua Wong, the leader of another student protest group, Scholarism, who was arrested during protests last week, lauded the Occupy leaders for spreading the idea of civil disobedience to the broader public. But Mr. Wong also said students wouldn’t end protests now. Mr. Wong joined with two fellow students to start a hunger strike late Monday night in a bid to restart talks with the government.

Students and other protesters have been demanding the right to publicly nominate and vote for candidates for the city’s top leadership post, the chief executive. Beijing has said that China’s central government has the right to vet candidates before they can run for the top office. On Monday, current Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying repeated his conviction that Beijing’s decision was nonnegotiable.

The Occupy group first raised the idea of street occupations in early 2013 to paralyze Hong Kong’s central business district to push for changes to the city’s election process. The group held multiple forums and an unofficial referendum over a year and a half to build support. The group initially planned to have a sit-in starting on Oct. 1 that will last for a couple of days.

But a week-long class boycott initiated by students at the end of September ultimately evolved into a widespread occupation overtaking the Occupy group’s momentum and sidelining the group’s leaders from the street protests.

Write to Fiona Law at fiona.law@wsj.com and Chester Yung atchester.yung@wsj.com

 

[Keel]

Those reporting low-lives are exaggerating the "use of forces" by the upright police while tuning down the illegality and violence committed by the protesting criminals. What a shame!

 

[Keel]

Protesters make own weapons

Kevin Cheng Tuesday, December 02, 2014

Activists have resorted to constructing homemade weapons, including shields with protruding nails, to step up the offensive against police in Admiralty.
At least one officer was injured by a wooden shield which was covered with cardboard and had small nails sticking out the front in clashes early yesterday.

The officer suffered puncture wounds near his elbow from the nails.

Police said while the nails would not cause lethal injuries, they could still seriously injure officers.

The shields were similar to the 30 found along with a cache of weapons in Tai Kok Tsui on Saturday. Five people, including radical Occupy Central activist Chung Ming-lun, were arrested.

Boxes of nails, nuts and bolts, screws and latches were also seized. The five remain in detention without charge.

Scholarism leader Joshua Wong Chi- fung denied the shields were weapons, saying if that were so then elderly people who pick up cardboard are weapon dealers.

Fred Tsui Wai-hung, senior superintendent of the Police Public Relations Branch, said many objects had been thrown at officers, including eggs and black pepper, and that someone had even used a fire extinguisher. Metal bars, wooden sticks and bricks were also seized at the scene of clashes.

"Some of the activists had distributed self-made shields and pads in an organized and systematic manner to resort to violence and storm the police cordon lines," Tsui said. "The shields had wooden planks inside, and some had sharp iron edges. That will cause a lot of injuries. Some activists also used extinguishers to spray police."

Tsui said activists scattered small rocks and sand on Lung Wo Road on Sunday night as they set up barricades to block off the four lanes of the tunnel near the Central Government Offices.

This made it more dangerous for police to push forward and clear the road, Tsui said. He said this also posed a risk to vehicles traveling on the road, especially motorcycles.

 

[TaiShang]

“This all made me, this old man, deeply sad. Many times, I knelt down on my knees to pray for God to protect us. And I hope all participants of this movement could safely go home,” he said.

Which God you pray, you ****head? Seemingly, he is busy elsewhere.

 

[DeVice]

We should sue them as an attempt of mass murdering policemen.

 

[BoQ77]

I don't support the violence against officers and vice versa.

 

[ahojunk]

Yay, finally some common sense prevail.

Send those hooligans and criminals to jail.

They were being used by foreign powers to stir up trouble for so called "democracy". If the Americans and British were genuine about democracy why is there no democracy for 150 years while Hong Kong was under British control. The Americans didn't say a thing then.

The blockages by the hooligans were causing immense economic loss to the shop owners, extreme inconveniences to the common people and damages Hong Kong's reputation in the longer term.

 

[TaiShang]

‘US eyes Occupy Central movement as ability to destabilize China’ — RT Op-Edge

Published time: December 01, 2014 14:34

Demonstrators flee as police fire tear gas during clashes following the grand jury decision in the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri (AFP Photo / Jewel Samad)

Unlike the Ferguson protests, US is interested and actively supporting the Occupy Central movement, hoping that it can destabilize China, and to make demands on the Chinese government, Sara Flounders, Head of the International Action Center, told RT.

RT: What features of the Hong Kong movement can you name and what are the foreigners going to the Hong Kong protests trying to achieve?

SF: Well, what’s important about the demonstrations in Hong Kong is the huge support that came immediately from US officials and media, from Britain and yet the complete silence and the lack of response in the cities throughout the rest of China. We could compare that to what has just taken place in Ferguson, Missouri, and the demonstrations there and on the same day demonstrations in 170 US cities. So you can really see that what happened in Hong Kong is that they were not successful in both broadening that struggle and gaining support from working people in Hong Kong or from it resonating in the rest of China and that is an important part of what Occupy Central and its limitations represent in Hong Kong, because this is a movement that does not challenge the banks of Hong Kong who are the real power in Hong Kong. Occupy Wall Street, that began in New York… its demands were against Wall Street: the banks, the very banks [where] in the bailout of billions of dollars placed by the US government, and yet people’s homes were allowed to go into bankruptcy in the millions. So we see a movement in Hong Kong that is making no demands on the banks even though this is one of the largest financial centers in the world, and instead is making demands strictly on the central government in China. And that shows a lot about what this movement represents and who is behind it.

RT: What would you say about the differences in the US rhetoric over the protests in Hong Kong and how it's handling the Ferguson protests at home?

SF: Well, here you have US officials meeting Chinese officials demanding that they listen to the demands of the demonstrators and China responded “this is interference in our internal affairs; it’s an attack on our sovereignty.” But the very same US officials certainly haven’t lectured or made demands on local and state officials in Ferguson, Missouri, nor have they expressed great sympathy for the demonstrators in Ferguson. Instead what they are telling young people who are all too often, particularly youth of color, African-American, Latino youth, victims of police attacks that they should accept the Grand Jury ruling that made no charges against the policeman who murdered in cold blood, his hands raised, a young black man. So the difference is never more profound than what is happening [with] a movement on the other side of the world. There is great sympathy, expressed in the corporate media here and by US officials. And a movement for justice right here, within the US, which resonates all across the country and millions of people are responding to, there is no expression of sympathy or of support. Instead we see a huge police crackdown and clearing people off the streets and you see the images here of the militarized police force operating with tanks, with helicopters with policemen in full body armor again and again using stun and percussion gas. So there is a huge difference between the two movements and between the ways in which the two movements are treated.

Police use batons against pro-democracy protesters near the government headquarters in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong on December 1, 2014. (AFP Photo / Dale de la Rey)

RT: And speaking about funding, what is the difference between Occupy Central movement and protests in Ferguson, Missouri?

SF: The United States has been most generous in the funding through non-governmental organizations (NGOs). [It’s been providing extensive backing and] funding to the Occupy Central movement and its leaders through the National Endowment for Democracy, through the National Democratic Institute, Soros , Rockefeller and Ford foundations and many other foundations... And of course there is no such support for black and Latino youth here in the US. Even for them to have the right to a college education, instead there is mass incarceration and the largest prison population in the world.

RT: Various pop and movie stars also joined the protesters in Hong Kong - why is taking to the streets becoming so popular?

SF: Well, there are number of celebrities here that are based in studios and very linked in to the corporate media, this doesn’t in any way threaten their careers or their future to speak for democracy in Hon Kong. The real challenge would be: do they defend or support democracy right here in the US; are they against racist police terror right here? That’s the acid test and most of these celebrities overwhelmingly would completely fail to call for justice, to call for democracy or to call for an end to the racist police terror right here in the US.

Police arrest a protester in Ferguson, Missouri (AFP Photo / Jewel Samad)

RT: Various international celebrities have travelled to Hong Kong to appear among the protesters - such as Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google and actor James Franco. Is there an element of glamour in these protests, which is drawing foreigners?

SF: Well, they recognize corporate interest and profit. The movement in Hong Kong has the support not only of celebrities in the US and Britain and around the world. From its very first days, I remember a press conference with AD hedge fund managers and bankers in support of Occupy Central in Hong Kong. So they see this movement as a movement that can make demands on the government in China, they are interested in it for its ability - they hope, but I don’t think it will succeed - to destabilize China and to make demands on the Chinese government. And so when you look at why Google would be interested, why celebrities whose career or future is based on what is happening with the conglomeration of banks that control industry and finance. Yes they are only too willing to speak and to be on stage and be in the demonstration. That’s easy and it is not what we should separate from a genuine call for justice and we should ask them why they are not marching in the streets of the cities of the US against the abuse of the police, the militarized and the racist police, right here. That alone should expose just how genuine they are.

RT: And what is the role of the corporate media in these protests?

SF: The media, and this is true for the corporate media, very much responds to this big center of banking and finance and they create the forces that they find would destabilize China in the same way that they would support the color revolutions in Eastern Europe in the former Soviet Republics, in the same way that they embraced fascist groups in Ukraine. It’s not much different, the role that they are willing to play in Hong Kong, and that is to support a movement that receives generous funding from abroad and makes no real demands on the life for poor and working people even within Hong Kong. Hong Kong exists as a special administrative zone, because it was a colony of Britain without ever having a moment of democracy in all the years of British rule. It was only when Hong Kong was returned to China rightfully that suddenly these voices emerged calling for democracy: they had been silent for well over a hundred years, more than 150 years. So suddenly they emerged calling for democracy, the very banks and institutions that provide absolutely no democracy for people anywhere the world.

 

[Keel]

The scumbags promote "Occupy Central with love and peace" WTF

 

[Keel]

 

[BoQ77]

Gangsters allowed to hit the protesters. I realized the authorities and gangsters have connection.

 

[Keel]

 

[BoQ77]

I love the guy in Captain America uniform.

 

[ahojunk]

The scumbags promote "Occupy Central with love and peace" WTF

These scumbags are vandalizing property and their garbage are blocking public transportation. WTF

 

[Keel]

See the vid of the Occupy Central thugs‘ vandalism and then rallying against the policy

香港警方：示威者冲击立法会大楼 已拘捕6人(图)|立法会|香港_凤凰资讯


See the vid of the OC thugs gathering in large crowds blocking the pedestrian walks and traffic light cross-roads, creating nuisance for business and making huge inconvenience for the other people

旺角：大批示威者非法聚集 来回过马路堵塞路口(图)|香港_凤凰资讯