Hundreds of Hong Kong police yesterday cleared a pro-democracy protest camp, arresting Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) and another student leader, and reopening a main road blocked for almost two months.
Pushing back protesters, police with the help of workmen removed tents and other obstacles blocking the six-lane Nathan Road in Mong Kok district.
It is seen as the most significant move so far in efforts to clear away protest camps at three separate locations in the territory, as public sympathy with the demonstrators wanes.
Photo: AFP
Scuffles broke out earlier in the day as police wearing helmets and brandishing batons moved in to protect the workmen from the crowds that surged forward to try to stop them tearing down road barricades.
The operation went ahead a day after nearly 150 demonstrators were arrested as authorities cleared a smaller section of the Mong Kok protest camp.
Hundreds of police quickly pushed protesters back, and removed wooden and metal barricades, tents and other obstructions along a 500m stretch of Nathan Road.
About two hours after the operation started, only a handful of protesters remained at the edge of the site.
The movement’s student leaders Wong and Lester Shum (岑敖暉) were arrested at the scene, according to protest group Scholarism and the Hong Kong Federation of Students.
A well-known protester and member of the League of Social Democrats, Raphael Wong (黃浩銘), who was arrested along with the pair, said on his Facebook page that they were being held at a police station.
“I am at the Kwai Chung police station, next to me is Joshua and Lester, we have been charged with contempt of court and obstructing public officers,” Wong wrote. “It is possible we won’t get bail tonight and will be at a magistrates’ court tomorrow.”
Police were unable to immediately give a reason why the three had been arrested when contacted.
Tensions were running high yesterday after scuffles the previous day when police used pepper spray on protesters at the site.
Mong Kok was the scene of some of the most violent clashes since the sit-ins began in the territory on Sept. 28.
Demonstrators are demanding fully free elections for the leadership of the semi-autonomous southern Chinese territory in 2017, but China has refused to budge on its arrangements for the poll.
Police said they arrested at total of 148 people, including a 14-year-old boy, in the two-day Mong Kok operation and that 22 police officers were injured.
Separately, seven police officers who were suspended after a video emerged of them beating and kicking a handcuffed man have been arrested.
“Police have arrested seven police officers suspected of assault causing bodily harm,” police said in a statement late yesterday, adding that investigations were ongoing.
The video that emerged last month showed plainclothes officers hauling a handcuffed and unarmed demonstrator to a dark corner of a protest-hit public park.
One officer stands over the man and punches him, as three others are seen repeatedly kicking him.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
RSS