Beijing: Police stepped up efforts to reopen roads in central Hong Kong on Tuesday, tearing down barricades and tents at pro-democracy protest sites that have blocked main roads for more than a fortnight.
For the second straight day, hundreds of police in helmets and protective gear used bolt-cutters, sledgehammers and chainsaws to dismantle protest barricades, many of which had been reinforced by protesters using cement and bamboo scaffolding the previous night.
Protesters jeered and cursed but otherwise largely remained calm as police made quick work of barriers at Causeway Bay and Queensway, adjacent to the main protest site outside government headquarters, which remained intact. Police have mainly focused on the periphery of the protests, seeking to open as many roads to traffic as possible, while not interfering with the main protest site.
The coordinated police operation appeared to signal a shift in strategy ahead of an important Communist Party plenary meeting in Beijing, which begins on Monday.
Authorities had previously held back from interfering with protesters, effectively allowing them to occupy three protest sites across Hong Kong. An early attempt to disperse crowds with tear gas on September 28 backfired and drew even larger crowds onto the street to demonstrate, exacerbating the stand-off.
Thousands of protesters returned to the streets on Monday night after the police's first attempt to remove barricades, but numbers remained well down from the height of the demonstrations in the first week.
Protesters fear the removal of barriers exposes them to physical attacks from anti-Occupy demonstrators, as happened on Monday and other previous occasions.
"I used to think of Hong Kong's police as one of the best in the world, but even though they know taking down the barricades might compromise our safety, they're blatantly disregarding our safety," Bert Cheng, 22, told the South China Morning Post.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying has repeatedly rejected calls from protesters to resign, and said on Monday that he would not allow the street occupation to continue for much longer. He did not rule out the use of "minimum force" to clear protesters from the streets.
"The Hong Kong government and the police will continue to exercise a high level of tolerance," he said. "Still, this situation can't last for long."
The protests have polarised the city, with little sign of a revival of talks to end the impasse.
"The Hong Kong government has no intention to reopen dialogue with students," said Alex Chow, secretary-general of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, one of the student groups leading the protests. "We have to keep generating pressure on the government."
Heated clashes between those for and against the occupation repeatedly flare, while a coalition of truck drivers had demanded the streets be cleared by Wednesday. Anti-Occupy demonstrators have also formed a blockade around the headquarters of Apple Daily, delaying the distribution of the popular tabloid published by pro-democracy figure Jimmy Lai.
Pro-Beijing groups accuse Lai of funding or colluding with the pro-democracy protest organisers and criticise the editorial slant of his newspaper.
