Court bailiffs in Hong Kong are clearing out a protest site near government offices after the high court granted an injunction. The bailiffs, backed by police officers, are removing barricades outside Citic Tower in the Admiralty area, but leaving the rest of the camp. Pro-democracy student protesters said they would not resist the clearance and have begun packing up their tents. The high court has also authorised the clearance of the Mong Kok site. A third protest camp remains at Causeway Bay. The activists have been on the streets since early October to protest against a decision by China to screen candidates for Hong Kong’s 2017 leadership election. Numbers were originally in the tens of thousands but have fallen to a few hundred. Hong Kong and the Beijing government say the protests are illegal, and there is growing public frustration with the disruption to traffic and business. ‘We will go elsewhere’ The BBC’s Karishma Vaswani in Hong Kong said the scene at Admiralty on Tuesday appeared calm, with many students saying they would not get in the way. Police were watching the operation but were not getting involved, she added. Prominent student leader Joshua Wong told the BBC that they would not resist as long as the authorities only cleared the area mentioned in the injunction. Mr Wong said if the authorities headed to other sites, activists would be “very disappointed”. Garment worker Jason Fung told the South China Morning Post: “We’ll just go protest somewhere that the injunction doesn’t cover.” The bailiffs are acting on an injunction granted last week to the owners of Citic Tower, who had complained that access to the building was being blocked. The court also granted an injunction to taxi and minibus associations to clear the roads in Mong Kok, where on Tuesday protesters had also begun packing up. More requests have been lodged by bus companies to clear other roads affected by the protest sites. Police operations to clear and contain the camps in recent weeks have sometimes led to clashes. An attempt to clear an underpass near Admiralty led to accusations that police had used excessive violence, after a video emerged of officers apparently beating a protester. At the weekend, a group of student leaders were prevented from travelling to Beijing, where they had hoped to seek an audience with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, after their travel permits were declared invalid.– Source : BBC Online
