Читать книгу Hong Kong in Revolt - Au Loong-Yu - Страница 12

In 2014, Beijing began to roll out a package of reforms targeting the upcoming 2017 CE election. In exchange for granting universal suffrage in the election, Beijing would retain complete control over the nomination of candidates, to the extent that even moderate liberals would stand no chance of election. This so-called ‘31 August 2014 decision’ was met with widespread discontent in Hong Kong, to the extent that it antagonised even the pan-democrat parties. But it first and foremost angered the youth. The stage was set for a confrontation between Beijing and a young generation of Hong Kongers. The HKFS (Hong Kong Federation of Students) and Scholarism were the two main student organisations which took bold actions that triggered off the Umbrella Movement in September 2014.

There was a prequel to the Umbrella Movement. In March 2013, two well-known academics, Dr Benny Tai and Dr Chan Kin-man, along with Reverend Chu Yiu-ming (whom I collectively call the ‘occupation trio’) proposed the Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP) movement, whose main purpose was to conduct a civil disobedience action the following year to demand genuine universal suffrage.

It was the occupation trio, not the pan-democrats, which initiated the occupation appeal, showing the latter’s increasing irrelevance as a force for social change. After years of participation in elections for a semi-legitimate representative government in Hong Kong, the pan-democrats had become increasingly conservative. They usually won one-third of the seats on the LegCo through winning 55–60 percent of the vote in the direct elections. This should not lead us to believe that they ever possessed organisational strength, however (though this weakness on the part of political parties is also shared by civil society in general, for instance the trade unions). Fragmented into pieces, even the largest party, the Democratic Party, claimed to have only seven hundred members, and even fewer active members.⁵ The liberals believed Beijing’s promise of universal suffrage for so long that they were among the last to realise that it was wishful thinking.

But the occupation trio’s credibility quickly eroded due to their unwillingness to go ahead with their plan for the occupation. This compelled the HKFS to go ahead with their own plan to occupy the downtown Central district of Hong Kong Island on 2 July 2014, during which 511 protesters were arrested but not charged. The occupation trio and the pan-democrats refused to take part in this event and were deeply discredited as a result. Angered by Beijing’s 31 August decision, the occupation trio did later plan to hold a three-day occupation starting on the National Day of the PRC, 1 October.⁶ But the students were sceptical of their call to action. Again, it was the HKFS who took the initiative and launched a one-week class boycott on 22 September. The movement began to gather momentum.

During the class boycott, the HKFS and Scholarism decided to stage a rally on 26 September, outside of Civic Square, where the Hong Kong government headquarters is located. During the night, they suddenly occupied the square with around one hundred supporters. They were arrested the next day. Yet when the news spread, more than 50,000 citizens came to the scene to protest the arrest. They were met with tear gas, but they refused to give up the streets to the police. It was named the Umbrella Movement because the protesters held up umbrellas to protect themselves from the tear gas. On 28 September hundreds of thousands of protesters came back again. Many joined for the first time because they were angry at the arrests of students and for the firing of tear gas at the protesters the previous afternoon. At this time, the movement moved beyond the range of the students, and evolved into a movement of the middle and lower classes. The occupation even far exceeded the imagination of the HKFS. Similar occupations occurred in the areas of Mong Kok and Causeway Bay as well.