Re: Anarchists & Opportunist Abound in HK Chaos
LIVE: A brief respite as Occupy demonstrators bunker down and students prepare for dialogue with government
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 05 October, 2014, 7:50pm
UPDATED : Monday, 06 October, 2014, 4:59am
Staff Reporters
After a hectic week, Occupy Central protest sites are mostly quiet this early morning as demonstrators bunker down and authorities keep their distance.
Occupy supporters and the government are currently at deadlock over negotiations. Preliminary discussions to prepare for talks with Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor have begun, but progress has been slow with both sides disagreeing on the guidelines behind the meetings.
Stay tuned for all the morning's breaking news.
4:50am: In Beijing, online state media issued two signed commentaries late last night on the Occupy Central movement.The articles, both penned under the name “Guoping”, were published on the People’s Daily website and the State Council Information Office’s affiliated news portal.
One of the commentaries alleges that campaigners of the Occupy movement have been using “populism” to mobilise young people.
“Hong Kong is 7 million Hong Kongers’ Hong Kong, and more so, 1.3 billion Chinese’s Hong Kong,” the commentary reads. “The Central Government and all countrymen’s attitude and stance [on Hong Kong's 2017 Chief Executive election] are unprecedentedly unanimous and not to be shaken.”
In the other commentary, "Guoping" criticised “street politics” and said that whoever governs Hong Kong in the future must be “loyal to the state and Hong Kong”.
3.40am: While dawn is still hours away, there's one Sun working under the moonlight.
Timothy Sun, 17, was seen picking up rubbish around the Harcourt Rd area around 3am, using a pair of tongs and garbage bags he had brought himself.
"Cleaning up is one of my habits because I like tidy things," the Canada-born Hongkonger said.
He has stayed overnight in Admiralty cleaning the streets every night, bar one, since the protests began more than a week ago.
Sun said he continued to support the campaign because he believed police had overreacted by using tear gas and capsicum spray last Sunday. The fight for universal suffrage has also energised him.
"We have the right to vote for our chief executive," he said while picking up cigarette butts and other litter.
3.00am: The demonstration sites have mostly turned quiet this early morning, with police keeping their distance. In Causeway Bay, around 150 demonstrators have camped out overnight, with the majority remaining chatty and few sleeping early.
Admiralty and Mong Kok also remain peaceful, a stark contrast to the tear gas and scuffles that occurred at both sites earlier this week. A police cleanup of both areas seems unlikely at this hour.
Currently, a few hundred people remain at the Mong Kok sit-in, while one protester who identified himself only as Jacky to a Post reporter showed up in fully decked-out combat gear to "support the students".