HONG KONG: Hong Kong police arrested more than 500 protesters at a sit-in early on Wednesday following a huge march that organizers said mobilized half a million people demanding democratic reforms.
The arrests followed the largely peaceful march on Tuesday that protest leaders said brought the biggest crowds onto the streets since the city was handed over from Britain to China in 1997.
Police moved in at 3 am to break up the sit-in by about 2,000 protesters in the semi-autonomous city’s Central financial district.
They said 511 demonstrators were arrested for illegal assembly or obstructing police, but pro-democracy activists and Amnesty International criticized the move as excessive.
Several pro-democracy lawmakers were among those arrested. Police lifted activists, many lying on the ground with their arms chained to each other.
“I have no regrets!” one of them shouted, while others flashed V-for-victory signs.
Some of those detained were released without charge. Discontent in Hong Kong is at its highest level in years over Beijing’s insistence that it vet candidates before a vote in 2017 for the city’s next leader.
Pro-democracy group Occupy Central has said it will stage a mass sit-in in Central later this year unless authorities come up with acceptable electoral reforms.
Hong Kong enjoys liberties not seen on the mainland, including free speech and the right to protest, but there are heightened fears that those freedoms are being eroded.
Concerns increased in June when Beijing published a controversial “white paper” on Hong Kong’s future that was widely seen as a warning to the city not to overstep its bounds.
After the document was published, nearly 800,000 people took part in an unofficial referendum calling for residents to have a say in the nomination of candidates for chief executive in the 2017 election.
Beijing branded the vote “illegal and invalid”. Tens of thousands of marchers Tuesday carried banners with slogans including “We want real democracy” and “We stand united against China”.
Beijing’s state-run China Daily said Tuesday’s march proved that Hong Kong’s “citizens have continued to enjoy rights and freedoms since the handover”.
But dissidents were “trying to hijack political reform with regards to the process for electing the chief executive” and had “resorted to unlawful activities” to pursue their goal, it said, in a reference to the referendum.
Pro-democracy activists condemned the arrests early Wednesday. “There was no violence and there was no confrontation with the police, why should some 500 people be arrested?” the retired number two official in Hong Kong’s government, Anson Chan, told reporters.
China has promised to let all Hong Kong residents vote for their next leader in 2017, instead of the 1,200-strong pro-Beijing committee that currently chooses the chief executive.
But Beijing says candidates must be approved by a nominating committee, which democracy advocates fear will mean only pro-China figures are allowed to stand. (Agencies)
