Pix: Nora Tam, SCMPHONG KONG: At least one protester was detained and an HSBC guard was hospitalized on Tuesday as bailiffs and police exercised a court order for the eviction of Occupy Hong Kong demonstrators from the street-level plaza underneath the Asia headquarters of HSBC, where they had camped for nearly a year.

A bailiff approached the demonstrators at 11 a.m. and gave what he said was the second of three warnings for them to leave. Hong Kong laws require bailiffs to give three warnings before removing people or possessions pursuant to a court order.

He gave the third warning several minutes later, but the demonstrators remained seated.

The police took action 36 hours after the polls closed in the Hong Kong legislative elections; the local government had been wary of clearing the plaza during the election campaign.

Questions of income inequality, an important issue for the Occupy movement, had been important during the campaign, although the dominant issue was a local government plan to introduce patriotic education in the schools. That initiative drew tens of thousands of protesters into the streets and the government ended up retreating on Saturday evening from a mandatory deadline of 2015 for the plan.

One young man who argued vigorously with bailiffs was encircled by police officers at 10:45 a.m. and pulled away around a corner. He walked slowly in a circle of police officers, who were holding his wrists but did not immediately handcuff him.

About a half hour later, bailiffs carried away another screaming protester, as the remaining demonstrators beat a rapid tempo on four drums and remained seated. A third demonstrator, a woman, was pulled away by bailiffs at 11:20. She was taken to the edge of a nearby road, where the other two demonstrators were being watched by police, who formed a line to prevent the them from reentering the plaza but did not try to further restrain them.

In Hong Kong, bailiffs are court officers who serve legal documents and enforce court decisions.

About a dozen protesters shouted angrily at police.

“It’s illegal to detain him,” one of them yelled.

The remaining protesters then retreated to the middle of their tents, sat down and began talking quietly among themselves as police watched.

The bailiffs paused and consulted among themselves at 11:30 when one of the remaining demonstrators used a portable megaphone to argue that the bailiffs had violated a local regulation, often followed in the eviction of apartment tenants who do not pay rent, that a visible notice of eviction must be posted in advance.

But a few minutes later, the bailiffs began carrying away a large chair and blankets from the sit-in, drawing outraged cries from the demonstrators.

By 11:45, bailiffs were leaving the remaining demonstrators in a seated group while they took a formal inventory of the tents, chairs and other possessions, then turned them over to workers in blue T-shirts, who carried them away.

A few homeless and mentally ill people have joined the protesters in recent months, but they were not in evidence on Tuesday. The dozen or so demonstrators – more than the half-dozen who appeared to have been living at the site during the summer – are all young men and women and spoke to each other in Cantonese, the local dialect.

The first demonstrator to be removed tried to return to the encampment just before noon. A confrontation ensued, and an HSBC security guard ended up lying motionless on the sidewalk and was taken away, still apparently conscious, on a stretcher to an ambulance.

Police loaded the demonstrator into a police van parked at the side of the HSBC building on Bank Street; the van did not immediately leave.

It was not easy for reporters inside the encampment to see exactly what happened in the crowd of police and security guards at the site’s edge.

A young man in a black T-shirt and shoulder-length hair who was coordinating with police – and identified himself as an Occupy Central activist who for personal reasons did not want to be arrested with the rest or provide his name – said the demonstrator had been pushed into the guard.

But an American passerby was taking photos of the incident and observed it. The passerby, a lawyer who insisted on anonymity, said the demonstrator had been trying to get around the police and ran into the guard. The guard fell over backwards next to a steel-lined concrete flower box and may have hit his head on it.

The photos did not show anyone near the demonstrator right before the moment of impact, but do not show the impact itself.

After bailiffs had removed eight of the 13 tents, some of the demonstrators zipped themselves into the remaining five, while 10 more activists remained seated and chatting among themselves on several sofas.

By 1pm., the bailiffs had removed most of the belongings and swept away accumulated trash, sending cockroaches scurrying.

The bailiffs then encircled one of the occupied tents and began taking it down with the occupant still inside. They slid away the tent and carried away the pony-tailed demonstrator, who stayed limp, a common tactic for civil disobedience.

After being taken to the road, the young man ran around officers and back to the edge of the encampment before he was stopped.

The removal of the protesters went slowly, in part because of police tactics aimed at minimizing confrontation and allowing maximum media access. Demonstrators have shoved unarmed officers and bailiffs but not been arrested, while the crowds of reporters in and around the encampment are so dense that bailiffs had difficulty carrying the protester in the tent through them.

Police were ready for a larger confrontation, however. Diagonally across the street at the Cheung Kong Center, where big banks like Goldman Sachs have their offices, the police had three buses loaded with more officers, along with three empty extended vans and a command vehicle.

HSBC said it would not comment on the removal of demonstrators while the police and bailiffs were still engaged in their operation.

Entrances and exits from the HSBC tower, a landmark in the center of the city’s financial district, were blocked by police and company security guards.

HSBC had said in a recent statement: “We sincerely hope the occupiers choose to vacate the plaza in a voluntary and peaceful manner. We previously engaged the occupiers to seek their voluntary departure in May. It was only after they refused to leave the plaza that we resorted to action in the High Court.”

The protestors have been camping out since Oct 15, 2011, a month after Occupy Wall Street began its protest on Sept 17.

Responding to a legal filing by HSBC, a judge of the Hong Kong High Court last month had originally ordered the activists to vacate the site by Aug. 27, a deadline they ignored.

After they failed to comply with the court order, HSBC got a writ of possession from the court, authorizing bailiffs to remove persons and possessions illegally occupying a location.

The plaza below the HSBC headquarters is owned by the bank but is a public passageway, a complex legal status that contributed to delays in the removal of demonstrators.

The remaining, dwindling band of protestors have been among the last of the global “Occupy” phenomenon to hold out: Occupy encampments in some other places, like London, Frankfurt and New York have long been cleared. But the authorities in Hong Kong have been wary of seeming insensitive at a time of considerable public concern about soaring property prices and one of the widest wealth gaps in the world.

At the same time, a growing backlash against perceived collusion between big business and an undemocratically elected government has brought demonstrators into the streets in increasing frequency and numbers.


- Huffington Post