Image 1: A protester at the Occupy Central encampment in Hong Kong on Monday.
HONG KONG — Occupy Wall Street and the movements it inspired in cities around the world last autumn have largely disappeared, brushed aside by battalions of police officers, but a handful of activists still cling to a site in the heart of Hong Kong’s central financial district, and on Monday evening they defied a court-imposed deadline for them to leave.
Several activists with Occupy Hong Kong, also known as Occupy Central, held a concert with two electric guitars and a drum set late Monday at their encampment at the base of the Asia headquarters of HSBC, drawing a couple of dozen youths who danced vigorously as the 9 p.m. deadline passed. The bank responded that it would seek a court writ authorizing bailiffs to clear the demonstrators’ belongings.
The bank released a statement to the activists declaring that “repossession of the property will be set in motion and enforced by the court bailiff as a judicial matter, and any noncompliance by any of the occupants may subject themselves to sanctions.”
Responding to a legal filing by HSBC, a judge of the Hong Kong High Court had ordered Occupy Hong Kong activists two weeks ago to leave the site by the Monday deadline.
An unusual intersection of legal issues, local politics and weather has allowed Occupy Hong Kong to defy the authorities longer than similar movements elsewhere. Yet the half-dozen or so remaining activists are seldom seen these days at the site here, where a small band of the homeless and the mentally ill are often more visible.
Occupy Hong Kong started on Oct. 15 last year about a month after Occupy Wall Street began its protest. The Hong Kong group took the street-level space between large steel pillars that support HSBC’s building.
The area, shielded from sun and rain by the building overhead, is owned by HSBC but is a public passageway. That raised complex legal and political questions about whether the bank or the local government would confront the protesters.
Hong Kong has a high level of income inequality by international standards, and that has contributed to periodic street demonstrations entirely separate from the Occupy Hong Kong movement. Leung Chun-ying won election in March as the territory’s chief executive and took office on July 1 after a campaign that emphasized populism on economic issues, like housing affordability.
But nonpartisan polls have shown declining support for him since then as concerns have spread about his perceived closeness to the Chinese Communist Party and about an allegation from his rival near the end of the campaign that Mr. Leung had suggested using riot police or tear gas against pro-democracy demonstrators in 2003. Mr. Leung denied this.
Legislative Council elections are also scheduled for Sept. 9, and pro-democracy politicians could gain votes at the expense of the pro-Chinese factions supporting Mr. Leung.
In that political environment, the Hong Kong government has been largely silent on Occupy Hong Kong and has given little public support to HSBC to act against the protesters.
Occupy movements in other financial centers were cleared by the police last autumn and winter after cold weather began to thin the ranks of protesters. The New York police cleared Zuccotti Park on Nov. 15. The London police removed demonstrators from near St. Paul’s Cathedral on Feb. 28 and evicted a small remaining group of demonstrators from Finsbury Square near the city’s financial district on June 14.
By contrast, winters in Hong Kong are cool and pleasant. It is now, during the sweltering summer months, that it is unpleasant to be living outdoors for long periods.
Hong Kong lies at the same distance north of the equator as Havana. And it has twice the daytime humidity of sultry Atlanta, as meteorologists pointed out when the equestrian events of the 2008 Olympics were moved here after an international veterinary group refused to certify specially built pastures and stables in Beijing as being free of foot-and-mouth disease.
Several police officers kept an eye on the demonstration on Monday evening but made no effort to intervene. But there was a flurry when one of the young men at the demonstration, shirtless and wearing face paint and bead necklaces, squatted near the main escalator into HSBC’s office tower and began setting fire to golden paper that is intended to be folded up and burned as golden nuggets in ancestor worship ceremonies at local temples.
Four large fire trucks pulled up, a dozen firefighters in full gear rushed out and police officers joined them in speaking with activists and successfully discouraging them from setting more fires.
The Occupy Central site consists of 13 tents, a similar number of tables, and a few sofas and chairs. On Monday evening, it was decorated with a large sign that said, in white letters on a red background, “We are all workers.”
While Occupy Central started more than 10 months ago with about 50 supporters, most of them drifted away by spring. The remaining activists showed limited interest in promoting their cause and announced on Aug. 15 that they would no longer give interviews to the “mainstream media.”
Elvis Luk, a 24-year-old high school physics teacher, went to the concert on Monday evening and said that he had participated in Occupy Central protests off and on for three months last winter. Mr. Luk said that he had done so to show support for the thousands of people in Hong Kong who lost money in 2008 because they had bought savings instruments from their local banks, particularly the Hong Kong subsidiary of the Bank of China, that were linked in value to Lehman Brothers bonds that later went into default.
But Mr. Luk said that he no longer supported Occupy Central and thought the last activists should disperse. “I support removing them — this has dragged on so long that it doesn’t help the cause, and it’s not a good use of resources,” he said.
Ho Yin-sing, who was at the site on Monday afternoon and identified himself as a supporter of the Occupy movement, said that he had decided to remove his belongings. “I am starting to move my stuff and leave,” he said, adding that he wanted a “peaceful fight for harmonious coexistence.”
A half-dozen other people milled around the site on Monday afternoon, including a woman who brandished a tennis racket at passers-by and shouted obscenities at them for no apparent reason.
Last Friday afternoon, a typical, sweltering day at the site, two young men were playing cards, but referred questions to a shirtless, middle-aged man, who declined to discuss what they would do when the deadline arrived. A middle-aged woman, incongruously dressed in heavy winter clothing, sang to herself and appeared oblivious to questions; she was no longer there on Monday. |
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