Police clear Hong Kong rally site

In show of defiance, pro-democracy leaders invite arrest

Workers check the main road after police removed and cleared the occupied area outside government headquarters in Hong Kong Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014. Hong Kong police on Thursday took away demonstrators who refused to leave the main pro-democracy protest camp and tore down their tents in a final push to retake streets occupied by activists for two and a half months. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
Workers check the main road after police removed and cleared the occupied area outside government headquarters in Hong Kong Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014. Hong Kong police on Thursday took away demonstrators who refused to leave the main pro-democracy protest camp and tore down their tents in a final push to retake streets occupied by activists for two and a half months. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

HONG KONG -- Dozens of prominent members of Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement gave themselves up for arrest in a show of defiance Thursday after police swept through a protest camp, tearing down tents, posters and speakers' platforms that had given voice to anger over the government's restrictive election plans.

For 11 weeks, the street camp in the Admiralty district near the city government offices was an impassioned forum for public discontent, drawing in tens of thousands of people at its peak. But after the police received orders to clear the site, the end came swiftly.

On Thursday morning, officers cleared a patch of the camp, and in the afternoon they massed, encircled the rest of the site and warned people to leave.

Hundreds of protesters stayed, risking arrest after officers surrounded the area and issued repeated warnings to depart. The holdouts included a roll call of Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement: lawyers, legislators, student leaders and Jimmy Lai, the media mogul who has regularly challenged the Chinese government.

Lee Cheuk-yan, a longtime labor leader and pro-democracy lawmaker who was among the group waiting to be detained, said, "Our determination is the message we want to give out."

As she was escorted by two police officers to a nearby police bus, Claudia Mo, a pro-democratic member of the city legislature, shouted, "We will be back." Martin Lee, a prominent lawyer and veteran pro-democratic politician, followed her.

At a news conference Thursday evening, police said they had arrested 209 people at a sit-in at the protest site, and four more away from the encampment. They also collected identity card information from 909 people who departed after the area was sealed off in the early afternoon, and reserve the right to take legal action against them later, said Cheung Tak-keung, the police's assistant commissioner for operations.

Cheung seemed to imply several times that there would be further arrests involving activities during the street protests. "We arrest people based on evidence -- if they committed an offense, once we collect evidence, they are arrested," he said.

The four people arrested away from the sit-in have been charged with offenses including unauthorized assembly and incitement to violate laws, for actions dating from September, he added.

The democracy advocates' willingness to face arrest laid bare the political divisions in Hong Kong that have played out in the protests, which spilled onto the streets in late September, when many thousands of protesters occupied three sites across the city.

The demonstrators called it the Umbrella Movement or Umbrella Revolution, after the umbrellas used in the protests' early days to fend off pepper spray from police. The protest camp in Admiralty was the last large one remaining; another, in the Mong Kok area, was cleared late last month.

A last, small encampment remains in Causeway Bay, a shopping district. Police said Thursday that they would remove that one "at an appropriate time."

The protesters are calling for fully democratic elections for the city's leader, or chief executive. They object to the Chinese government's framework for the elections, which for the first time would allow the general public to vote for the chief executive but would effectively let Beijing screen the candidates.

"The Umbrella Movement has changed Hong Kong's political and protest culture," Alex Chow, leader of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, a leading protest group, said in an interview while waiting for the police to pull him out of the crowd for arrest. "There will be new rounds of civil disobedience."

As protesters were led away one by one to a police bus -- or in some cases, carried away -- the government sent in trucks with cranes to clear away debris from the sprawling encampment. Police officers tore down tents and stripped down the posters, signs and drawings that have festooned the camp.

Constance So, a university student, wept as she looked for a way past the tightening ring of officers. Her older friends at the camp had urged her to avoid arrest, and so she was leaving, she said.

"It's like my home," she said. "I'm leaving my friends behind. I feel like I'm betraying them."

Many people filed peacefully out of the camp at a police checkpoint, where they were asked to present identification; the police had warned earlier that anyone who stayed past a certain time could be subject to legal action.

Meanwhile, the dozens who had decided to be arrested sat waiting for the police. One of them was Liu Chu-tong, a 27-year-old graphic designer who said he had been volunteering at one of the camp's first-aid booths for weeks.

"I chose to stay here to get arrested because I think it could touch more people," Liu said. "That's how I came out in the first place -- I was moved by the students."

Information for this article was contributed by Alan Wong of The New York Times.

A Section on 12/12/2014

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