Hong Kong police reopen main road
Wong and another student leader arrested as main road open after two months
Hundreds of Hong Kong police yesterday cleared a pro- democracy protest camp, arresting Joshua Wong and another student leader and reopening a main road blocked for almost two months.
Pushing back protesters, police with the help of workmen removed tents and other obstacles blocking the sixlane Nathan Road in Mongkok district.
It was seen as the most significant move so far in efforts to clear away protest camps at three separate locations in the city, as public sympathy with the demonstrators wanes.
Scuffles broke out earlier in the day as police wearing helmets and brandishing batons moved in to protect the workmen, when crowds surged forward to try to stop them tearing down road barricades.
The operation went ahead a day after more than 100 demonstrators were arrested as authorities cleared a smaller section of the Mongkok protest camp.
Hundreds of police quickly pushed protesters back, and removed wooden and metal barricades, tents and other obstructions along a 500- metre stretch of Nathan Road.
Around two hours after the operation started, only a handful of protesters remained at the edge of the site.
The movement’s student leaders Wong and Lester Shum were arrested at the scene, according to a group called Scholarism and the Hong Kong Federation of Students.
It was not immediately clear why they were detained.
Tensions were running high Wednesday after scuffles the previous day when police used pepper spray on protesters at the site.
Mongkok was the scene of some of the most violent clashes since the sit- ins began in the city on September 28. “If we lose here, we won’t lose heart. We can go somewhere else [ to occupy]. It doesn’t need to be here,” Kelvin Ng, 21, told AFP.
Demonstrators are demanding fully free elections for the leadership of the semiautonomous southern Chinese city in 2017. But China has refused to budge on its arrangements for the poll.
Police said they arrested 116 people, including a 14- year- old boy, after Tuesday’s clashes and 20 police officers were injured.
Yesterday’s clearance was the third since Hong Kong’s high court, responding to petitions from a building owner and public transport operators, granted injunctions ordering the operations.
“Please obey the injunction, leave immediately,” a court bailiff told the crowd before the operation began. Civilians wearing “I love HK” T- shirts and red baseball caps then began removing barricades blocking the road but protesters remained defiant.