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Last of Hong Kong Protesters Pack Up and Wait for the Police | |
(about 9 hours later) | |
HONG KONG — Protesters who have encircled the political heart of Hong Kong for more than 10 weeks steeled themselves early Thursday for the police to close in and try to dismantle their camp, effectively ending the pro-democracy street occupations that have laid bare divisions over the city’s political future. | |
After a night when thousands gathered to give a defiant and tearful farewell to the pro-democracy camp in the Admiralty neighborhood, next to the city government offices, many of the protesters busied themselves packing tents and other equipment before the police were to start clearing them out. | |
Some protesters vowed to stay and accept arrest, as a show of resistance to the government, which has refused to offer concessions on how the city’s leader is elected. But most who stayed overnight in Admiralty, for nightlong celebrations and farewells, appeared resigned to retreating. | |
“We’ve been here for two months, more than two months, and it’s time to move on,” said Koby Chan, a sales representative in his 20s who was among a group of protesters packing to leave the area that the police have said would be cleared first, in enforcement of a court injunction. “We’ll stop now, but that doesn’t mean we’re giving up. We’ll be back for sure.” | |
That area of the camp was largely empty on Thursday at dawn. “It’s just the beginning,” declared a banner that had gone up over a barricade. | |
Attendance has been shrinking on the streets of Admiralty, reduced by exhaustion, cold and disappointment. But thousands returned on Wednesday night to see the camp, representing one of the largest turnouts since the early days of the movement. | |
Families lined up to collect bracelets and other mementos made by volunteers; other people took pictures of themselves and the posters and art that have covered the camp. Many signed banners demanding democracy and left sticky notes on what is called the Lennon Wall, a side of a government building facing the camp that is covered in the notes. | |
Even before dawn broke on Thursday, the camp bustled with life. Groups packed tents, preparing to leave, although hundreds of tents remained, as many demonstrators were still asleep. | |
Charlotte Chan, a 19-year-old nursing student, reclined on a sofa that had been used to block an escalator leading to the government offices, and she said that even those who wanted to keep up the demonstrations could see that they lacked support. | |
“I’m angry, because the protest has been for two months, and I think we should go on,” she said. “But most want to go, so it’s time to accept that. It’s time to leave, even if we don’t want to go.” | |
Whatever happens, the protests have exposed and widened political fissures, Hong Kong residents say. The government and its supporters have accused the protesters of reckless naïveté and of assisting in Western-sponsored subversion. Many protesters have said the Chinese government’s plans for election changes in the city would give Beijing the power to choose winners. | |
At supply stations for the protesters, volunteers packed away safety masks, goggles and helmets stockpiled for possible confrontations with the police. Student leaders have said they do not want a repeat of the violence that erupted after the police demolished the other main protest camp, in the Mong Kok neighborhood, on Nov. 25. | |
But in recent weeks, the protesters have become increasingly split between those who favor peaceful resistance and a minority who argue that only escalating the protests, and risking confrontation, can win concessions. A few have vowed to resist the police in Admiralty, said Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung, a pro-democracy member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, who has sought to defuse confrontations during the protests. | |
“If you have one incident, or one person triggering the offensive from our side, the police could respond with tens or hundreds of times” more force, he said in an interview on Tuesday. | |
The Admiralty protest camp sprang up on Sept. 28, when thousands of protesters seized the streets after a bungled police effort to disperse students with tear gas and pepper spray. The police hope that a tightly choreographed operation to clear it will avoid such misfires. | |
The operation will proceed in steps, beginning with the clearance of an area covered by a court injunction, said a police official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. | The operation will proceed in steps, beginning with the clearance of an area covered by a court injunction, said a police official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. |
After that, the police will move on to the main camp, first warning people to leave, then sealing off the area so no one can enter, and then removing protesters and their tents. The effort could take much of the day, if not longer, and the police are prepared to make many arrests, the official said. Already, 655 people have been arrested since the protests began, he said. | |
A half-dozen young men wearing scarves or surgical masks to cover their faces were reinforcing some of the barricades before dawn on Thursday. | |
But the masked men, who refused to give their names because of the impending police action, said that they did not plan to fight the police. “We will let the students get away first, and then we’ll wait until the last minute” before leaving as well, one of them said. | |
Carrie Lam, the chief secretary of the Hong Kong government and its second-ranking official, said on Wednesday that 3,000 government employees near Admiralty would not go to work on Thursday, and she urged people to stay away. | |
But Steve Vickers, a senior Hong Kong police official before the British handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, predicted that resistance would be limited. “There will be a small, very hard core who will resist,” Mr. Vickers said. “The bulk of them will probably melt away after some screaming and shouting.” |