Hong Kong Occupy leaders tell students to retreat

Honk Kong, December 2
The founders of Hong Kong’s Occupy Central civil disobedience movement on Tuesday called on pro-democracy activists to pull back from the city’s main protest site next to government headquarters and said they will surrender to the police.

Benny Tai, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, urged the protesters to go home just hours after student leader Joshua Wong called on supporters to regroup in the heart of the city to demand greater democracy.

Tai, at a press conference with Occupy co-founders Chan Kin-man, a professor of sociology at Chinese University and Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, said they were not unilaterally calling for a withdrawal but urging students to retreat as the situation had become dangerous.

“We can see that frontline police officers seem to be out of control,” Tai said, adding that officers’ loss of control will get worse and he feared people would get seriously hurt.

Activists forced the temporary closure of government headquarters on Monday after clashing with police.

The pro-democracy protests, which started in late September and have lasted well beyond many people’s expectations, drew more than 100,000 on to the streets of Hong Kong at their peak.

The Occupy founders said they planned to surrender to police on Wednesday for their role in gatherings labelled illegal by the government.

Tai said it was possible police would turn them away. — Reuters