CY’s Warning to Occupy Central Protestors

On 9th June, the Occupy Central organisers hosted the plan’s first “deliberation day” on the campus of the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Around 800 people signed up yet only 600 turned up. They set out the agenda for the movement and agreed on seven priorities for the campaign, including elevating the plan to “a movement of all classes”.

On the same day, the Chief Executive, CY Leung sent his strongest warning yet to the Occupy Central organisers, saying that there was “no possibility” it could be lawful or peaceful, and that it would be tolerated by neither the government nor courts. 

“To organise unlawful activities that disrupt law and order [at this stage without an electoral reform proposal] leads one to question the motive: is it breaking the law for the sake of it?” Leung said, before leaving on his first official visit to the US. He urged the protesters to come up with a proposal, and insisted that the government was determined to enforce the law against any illegal acts.

In response, HKU Law professor, Benny Tai, who proposed the plan, said the warning was “totally inappropriate” and they would stick to a non-violent approach in their civil disobedience. “I would like him to point out to us what kind of things we have done so far that are illegal, or not peaceful, or violent in nature?” CUHK professor Chan Kin-man, another core organiser of the plan, said: “I do not see how it is necessary at all to use the PLA to suppress our movement. Instead, they should think about how to respond to the requests of hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong people who demand genuine universal suffrage.”

However, veteran China-watcher Ching Cheong feared that the action planned for next year could result in bloodshed similar to that of Tiananmen Square in 1989. Former legislator Allen Lee Peng-fei agreed that bloodshed "was possible".