January 6, 2015 6:36 AM
Lester Shum, one of the leaders of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, speaks in Hong Kong on Tuesday.Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The Hong Kong government’s formal report to Chinese officials on nearly three months of democracy protests has proven disappointing to the protesters.
The government on Tuesday released a 155-page report (PDF) titled “Report on the Recent Community and Political Situation in Hong Kong.” Government officials pledged to submit the report as minor peace offering during televised talks with five representatives of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, a student group, in October, after the protesters expressed disappointment with a previous report. The report has been submitted to the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of China’s State Council, or cabinet.
Pro-democracy figures were critical of the report. Lester Shum, deputy secretary-general of HKFS, compared it to a collection of magazine and news clippings made by a school student and said it didn’t directly address the political impasse in Hong Kong.
“This report was meant to be a sweetener from the government after the talks with HKFS,” said Joshua Wong, leader of the student group Scholarism, on a Facebook post. “But there’s no sugar coating on this sweetener. It’s poison.”
The bulk of the report is made up of a detailed summary and chronology of events dating back to Aug. 31 and ending on Dec. 15, the day the third and final occupied site in Causeway Bay was cleared.
Pro-democracy protests broke out in the city at the end of September, resulting in the occupation of major roads for more than two months. The protests were triggered by a decision on Aug. 31 by the Standing Committee of China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, that any candidate running for the post of chief executive in Hong Kong in 2017 must first be screened by Beijing.
The report says the protests were ignited by the screening issue, but in its conclusion it downplays the divisions between Hong Kong’s political leaders and the protesters. Citing the code that governs Hong Kong as well as the Standing Committee, it says it is “the common aspiration” of the Hong Kong and Chinese governments and as well as the people of the city to implement universal suffrage “strictly in accordance with the Basic Law and the relevant interpretation and decisions of the NPCSC.”
In an appendix, the government also included copies of ads taken out by various pro-Beijing groups in Hong Kong newspapers against Occupy, including groups representing various Chinese provinces such as Hainan, Heilongjiang and Shandong, as well as the city’s Hakka community.
Lee Cheuk-yan, a pro-democracy lawmaker, said at a press conference that the report was “cursory” and that its conclusion was a misrepresentation of what Hong Kong people think about constitutional reform in the city.
Mr. Shum said that preparations made by police in recent days to arrest key figures in the Occupy movement would only exacerbate the public’s anger at the government’s report.
Dozens of pro-democracy figures — including Mr. Shum, Mr. Wong, other prominent student leaders as well as lawmakers– said they have received calls from police in recent days, asking them to prepare for arrest next week on charges of inciting and participating in an illegal assembly.
– Isabella Steger. Follow her on Twitter@stegersaurus
http://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-CJB-25539
