(NEW YORK) MintPress — The end has finally come for one of the global Occupy movement’s longest-running encampments in Hong Kong.
On Tuesday afternoon, security guards completed the removal of a handful of protesters from the street-level plaza underneath the Asian headquarters of HSBC, located in the Central business district, Hong Kong’s equivalent of Wall Street, where as many as 100 people had camped at a time since Oct. 15, 2011. The demonstrators were comprised mainly of young men and women.
At least one protester was detained and an HSBC guard was hospitalized during the six-hour evacuation effort by police and bailiffs, court officers who serve legal documents and enforce court decisions.
Responding to a filing by HSBC, a Hong Kong High Court judge last month ordered the activists to leave the site by Aug. 27, saying there was no legal reason why the protesters should be allowed to stay without the bank’s permission.
A number of protesters said they would not contest the ruling, but as many as 20 ignored it.
HSBC then got a writ of possession from the court, authorizing bailiffs to remove people and possessions illegally occupying a location.
The open air plaza underneath the HSBC tower, a landmark in Central, is owned by the bank but is a public passageway, a complicated legal status that contributed to delays in the removal of the demonstrators.
HSBC had said in a recent statement, “We sincerely hope the occupiers choose to vacate the plaza in a voluntary and peaceful manner. We previously engaged the occupiers to seek their voluntary departure in May. It was only after they refused to leave the plaza that we resorted to action in the High Court.”
During their eviction, the dozen or so demonstrators who were living at the site all summer, yelled taunts at the bailiffs. Referring to HSBC management in the building above, they shouted, “You’re being used by the men upstairs.”
The police moved in 36 hours after the polls closed in the elections for the Hong Kong legislature; the local government had refrained from taking action during the campaign.
The last protesters left linked arms and sang the Communist Internationale in Cantonese, the local dialect.
Occupy HK’s unique objectives
Ironically, throughout the occupation of the HSBC plaza, demonstrators had come out in increasing frequency and numbers to protest a perceived collusion between big business and an undemocratically elected government.
Guitar teacher Deng Cheng explained in an interview shortly after the camp was set up, “There are many problems in the society and world around us. And these problems arise mostly from the financial, economic and banking sectors.”
Hong Kong’s chief executive Leung Chun-ying, a self-made millionaire, was chosen by 689 members of a hand-picked committee largely tied to Beijing, and many activists criticize his close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
When Hong Kong was returned to mainland China from Britain in 1997, the guiding principle was “one country, two systems,” an idea that was conceived by then Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.
The Hong Kong Basic Law, the territory’s constitution, reads, “The socialist system and policies shall not be practiced in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and the previous capitalist system and way of life shall remain unchanged for 50 years.”
But over the past 15 years, critics have accused Beijing of extensive behind-the-scenes meddling in political, electoral, academic, media and legal arenas.
The latest flash point was a plan to introduce “patriotic education” into the local schools. The initiative drew tens of thousands of protesters into the streets last week and the government ended up retreating on Saturday evening from a mandatory deadline of 2015 for it to be implemented.
It was, in fact, the dominant issue in the legislative elections, which resulted in pro-democracy candidates retaining 27 of the 70 seats, more than the minimum 24 needed for veto power on constitutional issues, the most contentious of which is the eventual introduction of full democracy.
Beijing has pledged to allow Hong Kong residents to choose their leader by 2017 and all lawmakers by 2020, although no plan has been formulated.
Tens of thousands of protesters also marked this year’s anniversary of the transfer of sovereignty on July 1 with pro-democracy marches through the streets of the city.
Many protesters expressed anger about Hong Kong’s phenomenal wealth gap, one of the widest in the world, sky-high property prices, rampant corruption and human rights abuses on the mainland — the same grievances expressed by Occupy members.
It is precisely because of public outrage about those issues that authorities in Hong Kong were wary of seeming insensitive, and its Occupy protesters were among the last in the world to hold out.
Global movement
The first Occupy demonstration to gain widespread coverage was Occupy Wall Street in New York’s Zuccotti Park, which began on Sept. 17, 2011. By Oct. 9, the movement had spread to more than 600 communities in the United States as well as over 95 cities across 82 countries on every continent except Antarctica.
By mid-November 2011, with authorities cracking down, more than a dozen camps had been cleared in the U.S. and Europe. The last remaining high profile camps, in Washington, D.C. and London, were evacuated by February of this year.
Still, since it began, the Occupy movement has earned praise from international leaders including Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and of course U.S. President Barack Obama, who in October 2011 spoke in its support, but asked protesters not to “demonize” finance workers.
Indeed, inequality is a key campaign platform in Obama’s bid for re-election, although he no longer mentions Occupy by name.
A global survey of 23 countries published by Ipsos in January 2012 found that around 40 percent of the world’s citizens are familiar with Occupy. More than twice as many reported a favorable response to the movement compared to those who disliked it.
Support varied greatly by country, with South Korea, Indonesia and India reporting the greatest level of sympathy, while Australia, Japan and Poland reported the lowest.
Meanwhile, Occupy demonstrations are still continuing in Mashtots Park in Armenia, and the leader of the Green Party, Armenak Dovlatyan, has called it the most successful civic action in the country’s history.