A founder of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement yesterday said the occupation of the territory’s main roads is “high-risk,” urging protesters to turn to new methods of civil disobedience to push for electoral reform.
Benny Tai (戴耀廷), one of the three founders of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace movement, said the movement has run its course and that protesters risk further violent clashes with police if they stay in their camps.
“Occupation is now a high-risk, low-return business,” he said in an editorial in the New York Times, adding that campaigners should instead turn to “acts of noncooperation” such as refusing to pay taxes.
“The occupation has won over as many Hong Kongers as it ever will, and we should consider new ways to convince the public that fighting for full democracy is in their interest,” he said.
Campaigners have camped out on Hong Kong’s streets for more than two months to demand fully free elections for the leadership of the territory.
Beijing insists that candidates for the 2017 chief executive election be vetted by a pro-Beijing committee, which demonstrators say would ensure the election of a puppet of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the territory’s top position.
The rallies for fully free leadership elections drew tens of thousands at their apex, but numbers have dwindled as public support for the movement has waned and dozens have been injured in clashes with police as authorities have tried to clear the camps.
So far one of three camps established by the movement has been dismantled, and Hong Kong authorities are gearing up for more clearances next week.
Hundreds of pro-democracy protesters faced off with police over the weekend in a fresh escalation of tensions, with officers firing pepper spray and using batons on angry students trying to surround the government headquarters.
Tai and two other founders of the movement — Chan Kin-man (陳健民) and Chu Yiu-ming (朱耀明) — handed themselves in to police on Wednesday in a symbolic move aimed at ending the occupation, but the different groups behind the movement remain split on how to proceed.
Student protest leaders have until now remained adamant that staying on the streets is their only option to force reform. However, a prominent leader from the Hong Kong Federation of Students, the group which led the mass rallies, said on Thursday that students would decide “within a week” whether to leave the two remaining camps.
Tai said that using methods such as refusing to pay taxes or rents for public housing, and filibustering in the territory’s mini-parliament might prove to be more effective than blocking roads.
“Blocking government may be even more powerful than blocking roads,” he said.
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