Hong Kong protesters on hunger strike

after violent clashes

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/hong-kong-protesters-on/1504634.html

HONG KONG: Joshua Wong, the teenage face of Hong Kong's pro-democracy
movement, and two other student demonstrators went on hunger strike on Monday (Dec
1), raising the stakes after one of the worst nights of violence to hit the demonstrations.
Wong, 18, and two young female members of his Scholarism student group announced
the "indefinite" hunger strike hours after Hong Kong's leader warned that the two-monthold protests are "in vain".
Student-led demonstrators are demanding free leadership elections for the semiautonomous Chinese city, with the main protest camp continuing to block a long stretch
of a multi-lane highway in central Hong Kong.
China's communist authorities insist that candidates for the 2017 vote must be vetted by
a loyalist committee, which the protesters say will ensure the election of a pro-Beijing
stooge.
With frustrations mounting, violent clashes broke out on Sunday night in a fresh
escalation of tensions, with officers firing pepper spray at angry students trying to
surround the government headquarters.
Civil servants were forced to stay at home on Monday morning and the city's legislature
was suspended after protesters broke through police lines and occupied a major road
outside the complex overnight.
Wong, one of the most prominent faces of the so-called "umbrella movement", said he
was launching a hunger strike alongside university student Isabella Lo, 18, and 17-yearold high school pupil Prince Wong in a bid to force the government to respond to their
demands.
"Living in these troubled times, there is a duty. Today we are willing to pay the price, we
are willing to take responsibility," the students wrote on Facebook after announcing the
strike onstage at the main protest camp. "Our future, we will take it back."
Wong, who is in the running to be named TIME magazine's person of the year, called
on Hong Kong authorities to reopen stalled talks with students and for Beijing to
withdraw its decision to vet candidates for the vote.

But the announcement came just hours after Hong Kong's leader Leung Chun-ying
warned that the "intolerable" protests will come to nothing and hinted that further police
action may be imminent, in his most forceful comments of recent weeks. "Now the
(public) demand for police clearance is increasing. From now on, police will enforce the
law without hesitation," Leung told reporters.
On Monday, the high court granted an injunction ordering the clearance of several parts
of the main protest camp in the Admiralty district, according to bus operator Kwoon
Chung, which made the application.
A smaller camp continues to block another busy road in the shopping district of
Causeway Bay. Police cleared a third site in working-class Mongkok last week, making
more than 140 arrests, but sporadic scuffles have continued there between police and
crowds of angry demonstrators.
'ANGRY AND TIRED'
There was frustration and pessimism in Admiralty on Monday following the clashes. "We
feel a mixture of things: angry, tired, upset. All the emotions are quite negative and
tense," said student Eppie Chan.
Police arrested 40 people and 11 officers were injured, a spokesman said. A total of 37
people received hospital treatment. The Admiralty site had calmed by Monday afternoon
after a chaotic morning which saw protesters clash with police inside a nearby shopping
arcade.
The protests drew tens of thousands of people onto the streets in their first weeks. But
numbers have dwindled after two months without progress, and support has waned
among residents weary of the transport disruption.
A British colony until 1997, Hong Kong enjoys civil liberties not seen on the Chinese
mainland, including the right to protest. But fears have been growing that these
freedoms are being eroded under Chinese rule, while frustrations have been building
over growing inequality in the freewheeling financial hub.
In London, a senior lawmaker denied that Britain was behaving like an interfering
colonial power, after China barred his parliamentary committee from visiting Hong Kong.
The Foreign Affairs Committee is looking into Britain's relations with the Chinese special
administrative region 30 years after the 1984 Joint Declaration, which set out the terms
of the city's handover.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hua Chunying said on Monday that foreign
countries had no right to "interfere" in Hong Kong, and called the politicians' attempt to
travel "overtly confrontational".

But committee chairman Richard Ottaway said the lawmakers had "every right" to visit.
"I don't think for a moment that we think that we're still a colonial power," he told AFP.
"We've got every right to ascertain whether China is complying with its undertakings."
- AFP/xq/ec