Hong Kong leader will talk with protesters demanding he go
In a night of high drama, Hong Kong’s top official agreed at the eleventh hour Thursday to hold discussions with pro-democracy student leaders, a move that may briefly ease a potential showdown between protesters and police.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, also known as C.Y. Leung, said his government would meet with student leaders to discuss their demands for how a 2017 election would be carried out to pick Leung’s successor. Leung made the announcement just before midnight local time Thursday, after which a student group had said it would escalate the protests by occupying government buildings.
Despite that concession, Leung refused to step down Thursday, which several groups had said was a condition for ending the mass demonstrations. Occupy Central, a group that joined the student protest but is more moderate than the students, called the talks “a turning point in the current political stalemate.” Yet it added in a statement: “Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying is the one responsible for the stalemate, and he must step down.”
Government officials said the talks might start Saturday instead of Friday. That means major thoroughfares and public spaces would continue to be disrupted as Hong Kong residents return to work after a two-day holiday.
Protest fatigue clearly had set in Thursday. The crowds were smaller at three main demonstration sites: Admiralty, Causeway Bay and Mong Kok. Yet given the various factions within the “umbrella movement,” it’s difficult to know whether Thursday’s announcement will discourage the mass protests or give them a boost.
Until the late-night announcement, the chance of further clashes between demonstrators and police seemed high. A large crowd had converged early Thursday morning outside the chief executive’s office in Admiralty, and while the numbers dropped during the day, the crowd swelled at night.
Some protesters attempted to barricade and close a nearby highway, but they were stopped by less confrontational protesters, some of whom linked hands along the road to keep crowds from blocking traffic.
The developments here Thursday came as China ramped up its rhetoric against the protests. That raised fears that Beijing might be making plans to quash the demonstrations, if not immediately, then eventually.
The newspaper People’s Daily, a mouthpiece of China’s Communist Party, published an editorial Wednesday decrying what it called the “chaos” of the protests, with a vague warning on the potential consequences.
The protesters “have incited the public, paralyzed transportation, disrupted businesses … and interfered with the daily lives of Hong Kong people. They should bear the legal responsibilities for their illegal activities,” the editorial stated.
“If a few people are determined to go against the rule of law and provoke disturbances, in the end they will reap what they have sown,” the editorial concluded.
Some observers said the commentary recalled similar sentiments expressed in the People’s Daily prior to the Chinese government’s June 4, 1989, crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Some Hong Kong democracy activists say they were concerned, but not intimidated.
This story was originally published October 2, 2014 at 8:23 PM with the headline "Hong Kong leader will talk with protesters demanding he go."