11th December 2014 and pretty much the end of the Occupy Central movement and although I was with Stacey my client we spent 6 hours at the clearance site to witness a bit of history!
The chap in the white shirt talking with the suit was one of the 3 on site Commanders - we arrived at the scene at 10.30am and left at 4.30pm, it was absolutely fascinating to watch how the protest site was cleared without any of the usual violence.
Court appointed bailiffs and their team made very short work of the barricades, some of which has been welded together!
The last hurrah from the protesters - the actual site clearance went very slowly due to the mass of reporters (estimated at well over 200) taking photo's of everything and generally just getting in the way...
One of the moronic student leaders who has not yet learnt to shave and whose attempts to whip the crowd into a frenzy was a dismal failure.
Of all the powerful symbols of protest you can think of I am still amused that the students picked an umbrella!! let me just say that the protesters from day 1 were breaking many different laws and our Police were empowered by law to clear them as they saw fit and it was the students violent behavior that prompted the use of pepper spray (hence the umbrella unfurled to stop themselves from being covered in the stuff).
The protests attracted their fair share of loonies, none more so than these 2 characters shown above who appeared to be on something... the guy in the hoodie, well heaven help us if he is one of Hong Kong's future leaders and the kung fu guy without the shirt was to pudgy to be a Bruce Lee look a like and I was bemused to see a white lady (blue shirt) there to show her support.
The chap taking the images is a local reporter on a budget given he was using a cheap camera and and a Samsung phone and was writing down notes by hand.
The Police operation was simple and 100% effective and it was just fascinating watching it
Sheer numbers of Police made the clearance easy... I was surprised they could move considering the amount of gear they were carrying!
Moron....idiots like this were responsible for much of the violence over the 75 day protest, student led violence was conveniently ignored by the foreign press and the students blamed it on Hong Kong Government "plants"
I had heard rumours of paid professional foreign agitators stirring up trouble and lo and behold 2 Russian chaps were there in full "body armour" - they were telling the 2 local students that they were going to resist the Police clearance as violently as possible.
A fitting end to a pointless, illegal protest movement, I still can't understand how about 400 students caused utter chaos and misery for 75 days (400, not tens of thousands as claimed by the foreign press) and they achieved nothing other than alienating the majority of Hong Kongers, the students are still claiming they speak for the people of Hong Kong!! I am glad it is over and I am glad I was there to witness the end.
If the students want to change things then they should do things properly and form a political party and get themselves elected, then they can speak for the people in a lawful, legitimate manner but I suspect they already know that no one would vote for them.
