Category Archives: OCLP Updates

Exam Review: Hong Kong’s Occupy Central with Love and Peace

Posted on by

Justin Tse | 29 August 2014 | Religon. Ethnicity. Wired.

Things are heating up over there in Hong Kong over the movement known as Occupy Central with Love and Peace. There’s going to be a rally on August 31 to deliberate over what sorts of acts of civil disobedience the movement will take in response to Beijing’s newly proposed framework for Hong Kong’s electoral reform. This is because while the Occupy Central movement put forward a proposal for Chief Executive candidates to be determined by civil nomination, Beijing has de facto rejected the proposal by insisting on choosing the candidates. Universal suffrage, however, seems to be still on the table. All of this comes on the heels of an anti-Occupy Central rally that was held in Central, as well as several seemingly political investigations of pro-democracy legislators. To add even more alarm in terms of the parallels to the Beijing Spring in Tiananmen Square in 1989, armoured vehicles have been reported to be entering Hong Kong from China.

Continue reading…

Pan-democrats take a hike to share their view

Posted on by

Hilary Wong | 25 August 2014 | The Standard

About 600 pan-democrats and activists hiked to The Peak yesterday calling for genuine universal suffrage in the 2017 chief executive election.

Among those who showed up at the event organized by Occupy Central were stalwarts Martin Lee Chu-ming, Audrey Eu Yuet-mee, Alan Leong Kah-kit, Gary Fan Kwok-wai, Albert Ho Chun-yan and Emily Lau Wai-hing.

Continue reading…

‘Waves of struggle’ will lead up to Occupy Central sit-in

Posted on by

Samuel Chan | 25 August 2014 | SCMP

The Occupy Central movement will plan “wave after wave of struggle” culminating in its blockade of the city centre if Hongkongers are denied a genuine choice of candidates in 2017.

Speaking at a hike for democracy that drew about 300 participants yesterday, Occupy founder Benny Tai Yiu-ting said core groups of the campaign as well as major student activist groups would meet to discuss their strategies next Sunday, immediately after Beijing announces its framework for universal suffrage in Hong Kong.

Continue reading…

Threshold set for Occupy Central

Posted on by

25 August 2014 | RTHK

Occupy Central organiser Benny Tai says his movement won’t carry out their full disobedience campaign if Beijing only rules out public nomination for the 2017 chief executive election.

The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress is expected to make a decision next Sunday. Occupy Central has said it will peacefully block Hong Kong’s business district if Beijing doesn’t offer democracy which meets international standards.

Continue reading…

Occupy Central ready to launch civil disobedience

Posted on by

14 August 2014 | EJ Insight

Occupy Central is set to launch civil disobedience in Hong Kong as soon as the National People’s Congress (NPC) approves an election reform package that fails to meet its expectations, Ming Pao Daily reported Thursday.

China’s legislature is expected to announce its decision in the last week of August during its annual session.

 

Continue Reading…

Laughing Off Threats in the Fight Against ‘Fake Democracy’

Posted on by

Didi Kirsten Tatlow | 13 August 2014 | New York Times

Chan Kin-man, a prominent Hong Kong democracy activist, receives many anonymous threats. He has gotten a razor blade in the mail and messages like: ‘‘Hunt and Kill Traitors!’’ Sophisticated hacking attempts occur daily, often from email addresses belonging to friends or students. Some threats are unprintable, about what the sender would like to do to Mr. Chan’s mother.

‘‘This guy sent it to me twice,’’ said Mr. Chan, sitting in his office at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he is a sociology professor, pulling out a letter from a folder. ‘‘He also likes my mother. Big fan of my mom.’’

Continue Reading…

Hong Kongers Demand Self-Determination—Will Beijing Listen?

Posted on by

Chris Horton | 3 Jul 2014 | The Atlantic

HONG KONG — Last Monday marked the 16th anniversary of the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule after more than 150 years of being a British colony. Official and unofficial events here attempted to present a cheery picture of Hong Kong’s relations with the mainland.

“They’re terrified that Hong Kong will become too democratic an example for cities on the mainland. It’s a parental mentality.”

“Democracy is not a panacea, but it’s something to start with. With democracy you have transparency, you have people’s wishes and real public opinion in play. People’s self-determination, in the end, is what democracy is all about.”

Continue reading…

Hong Kong’s Most Dangerous Man Wants People to Vote

Posted on by

Bruce Einhorn | 20 June 2014 | Business Week

Benny Tai, a soft-spoken law professor at the University of Hong Kong, is the man behind Occupy Central with Love and Peace, a pro-democracy movement that is threatening to stage civil disobedience in the streets of Hong Kong’s financial district. That, as fellow activist Edward Chin joked as he introduced Tai at a media briefing yesterday, makes the professor “the most dangerous man in town.”

As it organizes an election of its own in Hong Kong that begins today, Tai’s pro-democracy campaign is entering its most dangerous stage yet. “The movement now has reached a critical point,” Tai told reporters. Critics have denounced Tai and his fellow activists, saying Occupy Central will lead to chaos in the center of Hong Kong. The group has also had to contend with cyber sabotage, following a hacking incident that targeted Occupy Central’s website. The campaign, Tai said, “has been under a wave of attack.”

Continue Reading…

Pro-Democracy Media Company’s Websites Attacked

Posted on by

Alan Wong | 18 June 2014 | New York Times

Next Media, which publishes Apple Daily, an independent Hong Kong newspaper often critical of the Chinese government, saw the largest attack ever against the company’s websites on Wednesday, taking the group’s websites offline for hours.

“The scale is so big that it overwhelmed the DDoS protection service provider we hired to prevent an outage like this,” said Tim Yiu, Next Media’s chief operating officer. In a DDoS, or distributed denial-of-service, attack, hackers command swarms of computers to generate an enormous flood of traffic to knock out the target websites. Mr. Yiu said he received the first reports of the attack at about 2 a.m., and access to Apple Daily’s Hong Kong website was brought to a near halt for about 12 hours. He expected full web services to resume by Thursday afternoon.

Continue Reading…

The Pulse: Occupy Central Narrows the Field; District Councils “Promote” Constitutional Reform

Posted on by

21 May 2014 | RTHK

1. Benny Tai and Michael Davis discuss results of the Constitutional Reform Deliberation Day.

2. In societies that get to fully elect their government there’s always a bit of a conundrum when the government spends public money to convince the public of a viewpoint it might not share. It gets even more confusing when this activity occurs in the process of a consultation supposedly to assess public views. Hong Kong’s government allocated a total of HKS4.5 million in public money to district councils to promote the idea that proposals for electoral reform should follow the Basic Law, but do the public’s representatives have a right to help determine how that money was spent?

Occupy Central will have strong case in judicial review against company-bid rejection, experts say

Posted on by

Jeffie Lam | 13 May 2014 | SCMP

“The Companies Registry’s decision is inappropriate,” barrister Stephen Char Shik-ngor said. “Occupy Central would see a very high chance of winning the case if they were to file a judicial review against the decision.”

Hong Kong practises common law, which presumes people charged with a criminal offence are innocent until proven guilty, Char said.

“This is Hong Kong’s core value and the foundation of our rule of law,” he said. “Occupy Central has not yet committed anything illegal … how could the Companies Registry make such an assumption and declare it an illegal organisation even before it breaches the law?”

Continue reading…

Occupy Central’s bid to set up company rejected

Posted on by

Gary Cheung, Tony Cheung | 12 May 2014 | SCMP

“It was inappropriate [to compare us with a triad society] because a triad society’s objective is to engage in criminal acts,”

“Our goal is to achieve universal suffrage, and we have deliberation and voting before we decide” whether civil disobedience is required. “Many organisations, such as Greenpeace, League of Social Democrats and People Power, could undertake acts of civil disobedience and yet they are registered as companies in Hong Kong.”

Hong Kong’s Companies Registry turned down a bid by Occupy Central to register as a company, something one person familiar with the matter compared to an application by a “triad society”.

Continue reading…

Occupy Central with Love and Peace

Posted on by

7 Aug 2013 | International Political Forum

Occupy Central with Love and Peace, or Occupy Central in short, does not refer to the Hong Kong version of the anti-capitalistOccupy Wall Street movement in 2011. Nor is it a romantic title of a melodrama. Instead, it is a proposed civil disobedience movement which would take place in Central (the CBD), Hong Kong in July 2014.

Continue reading…