Hong Kong's students waver over Beijing trip, plan local march instead

Student leaders of Hong Kong's six-week-long pro-democracy movement on Wednesday backed away from plans to make a trip to Beijing during a key economic summit, as Chinese officials hit out at the former British colony's last colonial governor for "inciting" the Occupy Central movement.

Protesters holding yellow umbrellas march towards the China liaison office in Hong Kong, Nov. 5, 2014. AFP

Former governor Chris Patten, who handed back control of Hong Kong on July 1, 1997 under the terms of a Sino-British bilateral treaty, told a parliamentary foreign affairs committee that Beijing's recent ruling on the 2017 election for the city's chief executive had likely breached its mini-constitution.

"Article 45 [of the Basic Law] specifies how the chief executive should be selected, with a goal that it should be by 'universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee,'" Patten testified to the committee.

"One thing you can't say is that election committee is broadly representative," he said. However, he admitted that Britain had done a poor job of introducing democracy to Hong Kong in the 150 years of its colonial rule there.

"Our introduction of democracy, if I could put it politely, is not a good one," Patten told the committee, which is holding an inquiry to mark the 30th anniversary of the Sino-British Joint Declaration that sealed Hong Kong's fate and set out the terms of the transfer of sovereignty.

But he said the treaty was the best deal that London could have made with China at the time.

Patten called on the administration of embattled chief executive Leung Chin-ying to show more leadership to resolve the standoff with Occupy Central protesters, who have occupied three sections of highway in downtown areas of Hong Kong since Sept. 28.

The protesters are calling for Leung's resignation, and for an Aug. 31 ruling by China's National People's Congress (NPC) to be withdrawn.

The NPC said that while all five million Hong Kong voters will cast a ballot in the election for Leung's successor, they will only be allowed to choose between two or three candidates approved by a pro-Beijing committee.

"What is happening in Hong Kong is that there is an extraordinary lack of leadership," Patten said. "[The government] needs to get into serious negotiation with the protesters."

The 1,200-strong election committee, which voted Leung to power in 2010 with just 689 votes, has just 7.5 percent representation of pan-democratic politicians, far less that the broad popular support those groups enjoy, Patten said.

Current pan-democratic lawmakers in the territory's Legislative Council (LegCo) were voted in with some 56 percent of the popular vote, compared with just 44 percent won by pro-Beijing politicians.

China reacted angrily to Patten's comments on Wednesday, accusing him of "inciting the illegal Occupy Central Movement in Hong Kong."

"As the last governor of Britain's colonial rule of Hong Kong, he should have awareness of his role and get a clear understanding of the change of time," foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a regular news briefing in Beijing.

"The month-long Occupy Central movement is illegal," Hong said. "No foreign government, organization or people have the right to interfere in Hong Kong's affairs."

Students waver on envoys

Back in Hong Kong, the influential Federation of Students (HKFS) said it might not necessarily send envoys to Beijing in time for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leadership summit next week.

But it said it would join academic activist group Scholarism and the pro-democracy Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF) – the organization behind Hong Kong's mass July 1 political marches – in a march to Beijing's Hong Kong liaison office on Sunday afternoon.

HKFS deputy leader Lester Shum said the march would be "a start" in the next phase of the Occupy movement, amid an apparent stalemate in the wake of talks last month with Hong Kong officials, who offered limited concessions that the students said were "too vague."

"We want the voices of Hong Kong people to be heard directly by representatives of the central government in Hong Kong," Shum told reporters.

But he said a trip to Beijing by federation members, Hong Kong students and citizens was still a possibility.

"We will go straight to Beijing ... if the central government refuses to withdraw the Aug. 31 decision," Shum said.

He said the students have written to former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa and NPC standing committee member Rita Fan, asking them to act as mediators for the trip.

The CHRF, which represents a number of civil and rights groups in Hong Kong, has been a long-term supporter of the "Umbrella Movement."

"We have just one collective aim: we want the NPC standing committee to rescind its Aug. 31 election framework," CHRF spokewoman Chan Tsim-ying told reporters. "We also hope for a positive response to requests for a meeting between the student federation and central government leaders."

Determined protesters

Chan said protesters are determined to remain encamped near government headquarters in Hong Kong Island's Admiralty district.

"We hope ... people will maintain the territory they have already occupied," she said.

She said the organizers expect a few hundred people to march to Beijing's Liaison Office, where they plan to tie yellow ribbons to its gates.

Meanwhile, former security chief and pro-Beijing politician Regina Ip has called for the students to be represented on the controversial election committee, as well as more women, government broadcaster RTHK reported.

Occupy protesters are still encamped in Admiralty, Causeway Bay and the busy Kowloon shopping district of Mong Kok, but numbers have dwindled from a peak of hundreds of thousands after tear gas was deployed on Sept. 28, while anti-Occupy protesters say they are gaining wider support among the general public.

Protesters also face the possibility of forced eviction from their campsites, should police move to clear barricades from the highway following civil injunctions brought by the transportation industry.

Hong Kong was promised a "high degree of autonomy" under the terms of the handover, but rights activists and journalists say the city's traditional freedoms of expression have been under threat from self-censorship and intimidation of journalists in recent years.

Reported by Lin Jing for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Xin Lin for the Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

Link to original story on RFA website