Hong Kong police beat protester in violent crackdown on demonstrations
Video footage showing a group of Hong Kong police officers beating a pro-democracy protester has galvanised the city, ratcheting up tensions in demonstrations that have paralysed large swaths of the city for more than two weeks.
The Hong Kong television station TVB showed about six plainclothes officers in police vests leading the man, later identified as Ken Tsang – a social worker and member of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Civic party – away from a protest site, his hands bound behind his back. The officers took him to a dark corner behind a nearby building and threw him to the ground. Some kicked and beat him, while others kept watch.
Pictures posted to Facebook showed Tsang in the aftermath of the attack, with cuts and bruises on his face and neck, and circular welts running down his back.
Ken Tsang, a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist, is taken away by police before they were filmed beating him in a side street.
Ken Tsang, a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist, is taken away by police. Photograph: Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images
“This is an apparent abuse of police power that a society as civilised as Hong Kong would definitely not swallow,” Alan Leong, the leader of the Civic party, told CNN. “I would advise the commissioner of police to immediately arrest the six officers involved in that attack.”
Hong Kong’s secretary for security, Lai Tung-kwok, said the officers involved would be temporarily removed from duties, as authorities expressed concern over the clip and promised an investigation.
“The Complaints Against Police Office has already received a relevant complaint and will handle it in accordance with the established procedures in a just and impartial manner,” the Hong Kong information services department said in a statement on Wednesday.
The incident came as police launched a concerted attempt to disperse the pro-democracy protesters using riot shields, batons and pepper spray, prompting some of the most violent scenes since the demonstrations began more than two weeks ago. Police said they arrested 45 people and that four officers were injured in the violence.
It was the most violent crackdown since the first weekend of the protests, when police tactics – including the use of teargas – backfired by prompting more protesters to come out on to the streets.
The intervention, which included driving protesters from an underpass and removing protest barriers with sledgehammers and chainsaws, is being seen as the start of an operation to clear the protesters, and coincided with the harshest condemnation yet of the protests by Beijing.
Communist party’s mouthpiece the People Daily said the protests were “doomed to fail” and accused those involved of “exacerbating disorder” through “illegal acts”.
The police operation came hours after a large group of demonstrators blocked an underpass in the Admiralty area near government buildings that have been the focus of the protests. Demonstrators appeared to storm the short tunnel in reaction to police attempts over the past two days to chip away at barricades on the edges of the sprawling protest zone.
Hong Kong
Hong Kong police officers moved in on pro-democracy protesters who blockaded a road near the city government’s headquarters. Photograph: EyePress/Sipa/Rex
Lai Tung-kwok, the security secretary, defended the crackdown, saying in a statement: “A large number of protesters gathering at Lung Wo Road were found dashing to the carriageway, charging the police cordon and throwing objects. The protesters also snatched police barriers and set up roadblocks with plastic boards and drainage covers. As a result, police officers took swift actions to disperse those assembling unlawfully.”
Joshua Wong, a 17-year-old student leader who has become the face of the protest movement, said the video of the police beating meant trust between police and activists had hit an all-time low.
“The proper action police should take is to bring the protester to the police car, not to take him away and then punch and kick him for four minutes,” he told reporters.
Amnesty International also condemned the “vicious” attack. “It is stomach-churning to think there are Hong Kong police officers that feel they are above the law,” Mabel Au, the director of Amnesty Hong Kong, said in a statement.
Professor Joseph Cheng, from the department of politics at Hong Kong’s City University, said the police operation was being seen as the start of a move to end the demonstrations.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “These activities are broadly perceived as preparations for final clearing activities. What happened was the police wanted to removed the barricades and push the protesters to a smaller section of the road for traffic. The protesters tried to resist and tried to move another section. Minor clashes occurred.”
The protesters, who have being calling for the resignation of Hong Kong’s chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, and elections free of interference from Beijing, have posed an unprecedented challenge to the government. At their peak two weeks ago, organisers said as many as 200,000 people thronged the streets for peaceful sit-ins. The numbers involved have since dwindled.
Positions on both sides have been hardening since the government called off negotiations last week, citing the unlikelihood of a constructive outcome given their sharp differences. Leung has said there is “almost zero chance” that China’s government will change its rules for the election.
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Hong Kong Police Officers Suspended After Allegedly Beating Pro-Democracy Protester
By James Pomfret and Clare Jim
HONG KONG, Oct 15 (Reuters) – Hong Kong’s most prominent tycoon, Li Ka-shing, on Wednesday urged protesters who have occupied parts of the city since late last month to go home, after police mounted their toughest action against the democracy activists in more than a week.
Police arrested about 45 protesters in the early hours of Wednesday, using pepper spray against those who resisted, as they cleared a main road in the Chinese-controlled city that protesters had blocked with concrete slabs.
But footage of police beating a protester went viral, sparking outrage from some lawmakers and the public. Authorities said police involved in the beating would be suspended.
Outrage over the beating could galvanize support for the democracy movement in the city where the protests over Chinese restrictions on how it chooses its next leader had dwindled from about 100,000 at their peak to a few hundred.
Li, Asia’s richest man and chairman of property developer Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd, had made no public comment on the protests but broke his silence to say if Hong Kong’s rule of law broke down it would be the city’s “greatest sorrow.”
“Since the handover, the ‘one country, two system’ formula has protected Hong Kong’s lifestyle,” Li said, referring to the formula under which the city has been run since its return from British to Chinese rule in 1997.
“I urge everyone not to be agitated. I urge everyone not to let today’s passion become the regret for tomorrow. I earnestly request everyone to return to their families,” Li said in his first public comments on the protests.
The “one country, two systems” formula allows wide-ranging autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland and specifies universal suffrage for Hong Kong as an eventual goal.
But Beijing ruled on Aug. 31 it would screen candidates who want to run for the city’s chief executive in 2017, which democracy activists said rendered the universal suffrage concept meaningless.
Earlier, Hong Kong Secretary for Security Lai Tung-kwok told a news conference police would investigate the beating of the protester after he was dragged into a dark corner next to the protest site police were trying to clear.
Several officers appeared to beat and kick a handcuffed protester for several minutes in footage aired by television broadcaster TVB. The officers shown in the video would be suspended, Lai said.
Alan Leong, leader of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Civic Party, identified the person in the video as Ken Tsang Kin-chiu and said he was a member of the party.
Civic Party legislator Dennis Kwok, a lawyer representing Tsang, said police also beat Tsang inside a police station. Tsang had since been taken to hospital, Kwok said.
Photographs released by activits showed Tsang with bruising on his face and body.
Police, without referring to Tsang, said in a statement they had used minimum force, including pepper spray, to disperse protesters who had gathered illegally.
‘INSTABILITY AND CHAOS’
The altercation came after demonstrators swarmed into a tunnel on a four-lane thoroughfare late on Tuesday, halting traffic and chanting for universal suffrage.
“There were so many police. They punched people … We are peaceful,” a distraught student, Danny Chiu, told Reuters.
The tunnel in the Admiralty district near government headquarters was reopened after police cleared away barriers of concrete slabs.
The protesters are also calling for its pro-Beijing leader, Leung Chun-ying, to step down. But their campaign has caused traffic chaos and drained public support.
Leung said this week there was “zero chance” China’s leaders would give in to protesters’ demands and change the August decision limiting democracy.
He postponed a question-and-answer session scheduled for Thursday due to what he called security risks, citing calls for protesters to surround government buildings.
China’s ruling Communist Party believes it has offered enough concessions to Hong Kong in the past, and would give no ground because it wants to avoid setting a precedent for reform on the mainland, sources told Reuters.
The position was arrived at during a meeting of the new National Security Commission chaired by President Xi Jinping in the first week of October, the sources said.
The People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s newspaper, said in a commentary giving in to “political blackmail” would “exacerbate instability and chaos.”
On Tuesday, police used chainsaws and sledge-hammers to clear blockades on another major road in Admiralty, next to the Central business district. Hundreds of protesters then stormed into the nearby tunnel.
Despite the reopening of the two major roads there was no immediate sign the core protest zone outside government headquarters, where hundreds of tents remain pitched on a highway, would be cleared.
Protesters are scattered around other parts of Admiralty and smaller groups remain in the shopping district of Causeway Bay and in the densely populated Mong Kok area.
Police, criticized for using tear gas and batons in the first 24 hours of the protests, had adopted a more patient approach, counting on protesters to come under public pressure to clear main arteries. In recent days, police have selectively removed some barriers on the fringes of protest sites.
The police action in the early hours of Wednesday, however, suggested official patience may be wearing thin. (Additional reporting by Donny Kwok, Yimou Lee, Amanda Lee and Farah Master in HONG KONG and Benjamin Kang Lim and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Writing by Dean Yates; Editing by Robert Birsel)