Activists in Hong Kong have vowed to continue their fight for democracy, one year after clashes between police and student protesters sparked some of the largest demonstrations ever seen in the former British colony.
Hundreds of campaigners descended on Hong Kong’s government headquarters on Monday afternoon to remember the 79-day umbrella movement demonstrations that began on September 28 last year.
“I have a very simple message: we must continue the fight until we get democracy for Hong Kong,” Benny Tai, a university professor who helped launch the occupation, told The Guardian before addressing the crowd. “It is not over.” Joshua Wong, a prominent student leader, vowed to stay on the frontline of his city’s battle for universal suffrage, and said his message for China’s President, Xi Jinping, was: “Give Hong Kong democracy and autonomy. It is the commitment that China’s government made in 1984.”
Hundreds of police guarded the expressway running past Hong Kong’s government headquarters to prevent protesters from reoccupying an area they turned into a sprawling campsite for more than two months last year.
But activists said there was neither the energy nor the appetite for renewed occupations in the near future. “Right now people need to take a rest,” said a front-page editorial in the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily . “We will put away our umbrellas so that one day we can reopen them again.”
Chan Kin-man, a University of Hong Kong academic who helped launch last year’s protests, said: “I don’t think in the short run there will be a large-scale occupation.” He said students in the former colony were now split about “whether they should maintain non-violence, civil disobedience tactics or should move in another [direction].”
Erica Yuen, the chair of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy People Power party, said there would be further protests if Beijing refused to offer concessions that gave citizens of its “special administrative region” a real say in the choice of their leader. “I’m sure it is not over. Anyone who participated last year is ready to go again when the timing is right,” she said.
Ms. Yuen urged protesters to keep their faith in the fight for democracy and wait for Beijing to make a mistake.
— © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2015
