梁振英、曾偉雄，是佔中幕後推手
有果必有因。八個前因，看梁振英與曾偉雄如何令佔中「遍地開花」︰
近因︰
2.
學生重奪公民廣場一晚，場外示威者和平靜坐，警方根本不需要使用胡椒噴霧等粗暴手段，個別警員行為野蠻、目露兇光，於互聯網廣傳，激起民憤。
3.
佔中集會剛開始，警方阻止音響器材入場，並隨便以「阻差辦公」扣留泛民議員。佔中行動沒有專業揚聲器，失去直接指揮群眾的能力，運動主導權，落在普通市民手上。
4.
本來，若警方按以往做法，容許市民到添馬總部外集會，當時事情發展，對政府的最壞情況，可能如國教重演，但警方竟選擇封閉海富中心天橋，令市民聚集於金鐘對面馬路。
5.
市民由多個方向企圖進入會場，攤薄了警力，本來一場集會，旋即變成了陣地攻防戰，令更多市民聞風支援。
警方應對︰
6.
亂
用催淚彈︰筆者現場所見，發放催淚彈前，示威群眾並無異動。警方不可能不事先推演事態發展，不可能不知道，光天化日射催淚彈，觸怒示威人士，瞬間情緒高
漲，令抗爭之心更為堅定。不少示威人士即場數得出，近二十年，政府只用過催淚彈對付世貿示威的韓農，與越南船民營騷亂，當時，韓農有燃燒彈、船民有大量削
尖的自製武器。而今次警方發放催淚彈，對付的是手無寸鐵的示威者，發催淚彈後，更多聲援市民陸續趕到，壯大示威聲勢。
7.
現場所見，示威者其實也害怕催淚彈，走得很快，第一次接觸，很多人甚為驚惶。但是，示威者退後時，防暴警察卻沒有部署好，重奪路面空間。氣體散去，人群又重佔路面。警方配合失當，令到「第一彈」，沒有震懾之效、沒有驅趕之效，只有刺激人群，挑動情緒的作用。
8.
警方堅持不退，不開放添馬，加上催淚氣體四處飄揚，令部分人散開，漫步至中環、及灣仔，令佔領行動「遍地開花」，催淚彈功不可歿。
 |
| 每一發催淚彈，就多一格抗爭之心 |
遠因︰
梁振英從來不介意實現其「競選承諾」（遲早要出放暴隊與催淚彈），激化對立，鼓動鬥爭，有權盡用，進而濫用；人大落閘，歪理連篇，視民意如無物；政改諮詢，浪費了社會寶貴時間，又低估市民怨氣，這些說過太多，就不再說了。
佔領與催淚彈的影像，瞬即傳遍全球，各地媒體大篇幅報道，這是對政府另一種無形壓力。
為何有大量外國傳媒聚集香港？原來是中央政府自食其果。據vox.com報道，中央政府近兩、三年來，阻礙外國記者駐內地採訪，令到大量外國記者「滯留」香港，而這些記者非等閑之輩，都是資深及影響力大的記者。報道說，再一次證明，「審查新聞，要付出代價」。
要一向平和的香港市民，佔領中環、佔領金鐘、佔領灣仔、佔領銅鑼灣、佔領旺角，堅持一夜，並不容易，學民思潮做不到、學聯做不到、佔中三子做不到，梁振英與曾偉雄超額完成任務。
而今問題在，他們是否刻意的，是否樂見其「亂」，然後以非常手段，實踐暴政，達致「大亂而大治」的理想？
而今問題在，他們是否刻意的，是否樂見其「亂」，然後以非常手段，實踐暴政，達致「大亂而大治」的理想？
Hong Kong's unprecedented protests and police crackdown, explained
Protest marches and vigils are fairly common in Hong Kong, but what
began on Friday and escalated dramatically on Sunday is unprecedented.
Mass acts of civil disobedience were met by a shocking and swift police
response, which has led to clashes in the streets and popular outrage so
great that analysts can only guess at what will happen next.
What's going on in Hong Kong right now is a very big deal, and for reasons that go way beyond just this weekend's protests. Hong Kong's citizens are protesting to keep their promised democratic rights, which they worry — with good reason — could be taken away by the central Chinese government in Beijing. This moment is a sort of standoff between Hong Kong and China over the city's future, a confrontation that they have been building toward for almost 20 years.
Things started escalating on Friday. Members of a protest group called Occupy Central (Central is the name of Hong Kong's downtown district) had planned to launch a "civil disobedience" campaign on October 1, a national holiday celebrating communist China's founding. But as the already-ongoing protesters escalated they decided to go for it now. On Friday, protesters peacefully occupied the forecourt (a courtyard-style open area in front of an office building) of Hong Kong's city government headquarters along with other downtown areas.
The really important thing is what happened next: Hong Kong's police cracked down with surprising force, fighting in the streets with protesters and eventually emerging with guns that, while likely filled with rubber bullets, look awfully militaristic. In response, outraged Hong Kong residents flooded into the streets to join the protesters, and on Sunday police blanketed Central with tear gas, which has been seen as a shocking and outrageous escalation. The Chinese central government issued a statement endorsing the police actions, as did Hong Kong's pro-Beijing chief executive, a tacit signal that Beijing wishes for the protests to be cleared.
You have to remember that this is Hong Kong: an affluent and orderly place that prides itself on its civility and its freedom. Hong Kongers have a bit of a superiority complex when it comes to China, and see themselves as beyond the mainland's authoritarianism and disorder. But there is also deep, deep anxiety that this could change, that Hong Kong could lose its special status, and this week's events have hit on those anxieties to their core.
A big part of that deal was China's promise that, in 2017, Hong Kong's citizens would be allowed to democratically elect their top leader for the first time ever. That leader, known as the Hong Kong chief executive, is currently appointed by a pro-Beijing committee. In 2007, the Chinese government reaffirmed its promise to give Hong Kong this right in 2017, which in Hong Kong is referred to as universal suffrage — a sign of how much value people assign to it.
But there have been disturbing signs throughout this year that the central Chinese government might renege on its promise. In July, the Chinese government issued a "white paper" stating that it has "comprehensive jurisdiction" over Hong Kong and that "the high degree of autonomy of [Hong Kong] is not an inherent power, but one that comes solely from the authorization by the central leadership." It sounded to many like a warning from Beijing that it could dilute or outright revoke Hong Kong's freedoms, and tens of thousands of Hong Kong's citizens marched in protest.
Then, in August, Beijing announced its plan for Hong Kong's 2017 elections. While citizens would be allowed to vote for the chief executive, the candidates for the election would have to be approved by a special committee just like the pro-Beijing committee that currently appoints the chief executive. This lets Beijing hand-pick candidates for the job, which is anti-democratic in itself, but also feels to many in Hong Kong like a first step toward eroding their promised democratic rights.
So these protests aren't just about Beijing's plan to hand-pick candidates for the 2017 election, they're about whether Hong Kong will remain fundamentally free, an ongoing and open-ended question that will continue for years no matter how these protests resolve.
The other thing you have to understand is that the memory of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, in which the Chinese military mowed down 2,600 peaceful pro-democracy protesters in Beijing and other cities, looms awfully large in Hong Kong. While Hong Kong was unaffected by the massacre (it was under British rule at the time), the city holds an annual vigil in memory of the event, which has been so heavily censored in China itself that many young people have never heard of it.
Hong Kongers feel they have a responsibility to keep memory of Tiananmen for the fellow Chinese who cannot, but they also earnestly fear that it could happen to them. So that is a big part of why Hong Kong's residents are so upset to see their police donning military-like uniforms and firing tear gas this weekend; it feels like an echo, however faint, of 1989's violence. And in July, when Hong Kong residents protested the Chinese "white paper" implicitly arguing that China could revoke their freedoms, some pro-Beijing officials seemed to warn, even so subtly, that China's military could hypothetically put down any unrest in Hong Kong.
You saw that split in a mid-September opinion poll asking Hong Kongers whether or not they should accept Beijing's plan for the 2017 election: 48 percent said Hong Kong should reject the plan as insufficiently democratic, while 39 percent said they should accept the deal despite the tradeoffs.
That public opinion split among Hong Kong residents is what makes this week really important. The protesters were hoping to galvanize public opinion against Beijing's plan for the 2017 election, and against China's more gradual erosion of Hong Kong's freedoms. But Beijing (and Hong Kong's pro-Beijing chief executive) seemed to hope that, by unleashing this highly unusual crackdown, they could nudge Hong Kong's ever-conservative mainstream against the protesters and in favor of the status quo.
In other words, both the pro-democracy protesters and Beijing are hoping to force Hong Kong's public to choose whether or not to accept, at a fundamental level, China's growing control over Hong Kong politics. If the public tacitly accepts Beijing's terms for the 2017 election, it will likely be taken as a green light for more limits on Hong Kong's democracy and autonomy, however subtle those limits end up being. But if Hong Kong residents join the protesters en masse, they will be rejecting not just the 2017 election terms, but the basic terms of Hong Kong's relationship with the central Chinese government.
It is simply too early to tell which direction these protests will go. Although early indications suggest that thousands of residents began joining the students in protest on Sunday, it's not clear if this will grow significantly larger, as is probably necessary to force change, or will fizzle out under police pressure. However it resolves, though, this is a potentially decisive moment for Hong Kong and the uncertainty that has hung over its future ever since 1997.
What's going on in Hong Kong right now is a very big deal, and for reasons that go way beyond just this weekend's protests. Hong Kong's citizens are protesting to keep their promised democratic rights, which they worry — with good reason — could be taken away by the central Chinese government in Beijing. This moment is a sort of standoff between Hong Kong and China over the city's future, a confrontation that they have been building toward for almost 20 years.
This began with a movement called Occupy Central but escalated when police surprised them with force
Hong Kong police used a surprising amount of
force in attempting to disperse protesters, which failed and perhaps
backfired. (Anthony Kwan / Getty)
On Wednesday, student groups led peaceful marches to protest China's
new plan for Hong Kong's 2017 election, which looked like China reneging
on its promise to grant the autonomous region full democracy (see the
next section for what that plan was such a big deal). Protest marches
are pretty common in Hong Kong so it didn't seem so unusual at first.Things started escalating on Friday. Members of a protest group called Occupy Central (Central is the name of Hong Kong's downtown district) had planned to launch a "civil disobedience" campaign on October 1, a national holiday celebrating communist China's founding. But as the already-ongoing protesters escalated they decided to go for it now. On Friday, protesters peacefully occupied the forecourt (a courtyard-style open area in front of an office building) of Hong Kong's city government headquarters along with other downtown areas.
The really important thing is what happened next: Hong Kong's police cracked down with surprising force, fighting in the streets with protesters and eventually emerging with guns that, while likely filled with rubber bullets, look awfully militaristic. In response, outraged Hong Kong residents flooded into the streets to join the protesters, and on Sunday police blanketed Central with tear gas, which has been seen as a shocking and outrageous escalation. The Chinese central government issued a statement endorsing the police actions, as did Hong Kong's pro-Beijing chief executive, a tacit signal that Beijing wishes for the protests to be cleared.
You have to remember that this is Hong Kong: an affluent and orderly place that prides itself on its civility and its freedom. Hong Kongers have a bit of a superiority complex when it comes to China, and see themselves as beyond the mainland's authoritarianism and disorder. But there is also deep, deep anxiety that this could change, that Hong Kong could lose its special status, and this week's events have hit on those anxieties to their core.
This all goes back to a promise China made in 1997 — and might be breaking
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been seen as encroaching on Hong Kong's autonomy. (JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty)
This began in 1997, when the United Kingdom handed over Hong Kong,
one of its last imperial possessions, to the Chinese government. Hong
Kong had spent over 150 years under British rule; it had become a
fabulously wealthy center of commerce and had enjoyed, while not full
democracy, far more freedom and democracy than the rest of China. So,
as part of the handover, the Chinese government in Beijing promised to
let Hong Kong keep its special rights and its autonomy — a deal known as
"one country, two systems." A big part of that deal was China's promise that, in 2017, Hong Kong's citizens would be allowed to democratically elect their top leader for the first time ever. That leader, known as the Hong Kong chief executive, is currently appointed by a pro-Beijing committee. In 2007, the Chinese government reaffirmed its promise to give Hong Kong this right in 2017, which in Hong Kong is referred to as universal suffrage — a sign of how much value people assign to it.
But there have been disturbing signs throughout this year that the central Chinese government might renege on its promise. In July, the Chinese government issued a "white paper" stating that it has "comprehensive jurisdiction" over Hong Kong and that "the high degree of autonomy of [Hong Kong] is not an inherent power, but one that comes solely from the authorization by the central leadership." It sounded to many like a warning from Beijing that it could dilute or outright revoke Hong Kong's freedoms, and tens of thousands of Hong Kong's citizens marched in protest.
Then, in August, Beijing announced its plan for Hong Kong's 2017 elections. While citizens would be allowed to vote for the chief executive, the candidates for the election would have to be approved by a special committee just like the pro-Beijing committee that currently appoints the chief executive. This lets Beijing hand-pick candidates for the job, which is anti-democratic in itself, but also feels to many in Hong Kong like a first step toward eroding their promised democratic rights.
It's about much more than one election: democracy, Tiananmen, and an uncertain future
Hong Kong police try to retake downtown Central (Anthony Kwan/Getty)
People in Hong Kong have long wondered whether the Chinese
government, famous for its heavy-handed authoritarianism and its fear of
democracy, would really allow Hong Kong to become fully democratic or
even keep what freedoms it had under British rule. The 2017 election was
going to be a test case. So when China began to break its promises for
the election, it raised a very scary question: is Beijing just going to
erode Hong Kong's freedoms a little bit, or is it going to impose the
same dictatorial rule it uses in mainland China, one of the least free
societies in the world?So these protests aren't just about Beijing's plan to hand-pick candidates for the 2017 election, they're about whether Hong Kong will remain fundamentally free, an ongoing and open-ended question that will continue for years no matter how these protests resolve.
The other thing you have to understand is that the memory of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, in which the Chinese military mowed down 2,600 peaceful pro-democracy protesters in Beijing and other cities, looms awfully large in Hong Kong. While Hong Kong was unaffected by the massacre (it was under British rule at the time), the city holds an annual vigil in memory of the event, which has been so heavily censored in China itself that many young people have never heard of it.
Hong Kongers feel they have a responsibility to keep memory of Tiananmen for the fellow Chinese who cannot, but they also earnestly fear that it could happen to them. So that is a big part of why Hong Kong's residents are so upset to see their police donning military-like uniforms and firing tear gas this weekend; it feels like an echo, however faint, of 1989's violence. And in July, when Hong Kong residents protested the Chinese "white paper" implicitly arguing that China could revoke their freedoms, some pro-Beijing officials seemed to warn, even so subtly, that China's military could hypothetically put down any unrest in Hong Kong.
The protesters and Beijing are both hoping to force Hong Kong's divided public to decide on their future
Protesters block off downtown Hong Kong (XAUME OLLEROS/AFP/Getty)
This crisis comes in the middle of a political division
among the citizens of Hong Kong, who embrace their freedoms but also
tend to be conservative, over their future as part of China. Some are
okay with integrating with the rest of China, or at least accept it as
inevitable and don't want to kick up too much of a fuss, while some want
to fight for democracy and autonomy. (There are other layers to this
debate, such as Chinese nationalism versus Hong Kong exceptionalism;
there's also a strong law-and-order constituency.)You saw that split in a mid-September opinion poll asking Hong Kongers whether or not they should accept Beijing's plan for the 2017 election: 48 percent said Hong Kong should reject the plan as insufficiently democratic, while 39 percent said they should accept the deal despite the tradeoffs.
That public opinion split among Hong Kong residents is what makes this week really important. The protesters were hoping to galvanize public opinion against Beijing's plan for the 2017 election, and against China's more gradual erosion of Hong Kong's freedoms. But Beijing (and Hong Kong's pro-Beijing chief executive) seemed to hope that, by unleashing this highly unusual crackdown, they could nudge Hong Kong's ever-conservative mainstream against the protesters and in favor of the status quo.
In other words, both the pro-democracy protesters and Beijing are hoping to force Hong Kong's public to choose whether or not to accept, at a fundamental level, China's growing control over Hong Kong politics. If the public tacitly accepts Beijing's terms for the 2017 election, it will likely be taken as a green light for more limits on Hong Kong's democracy and autonomy, however subtle those limits end up being. But if Hong Kong residents join the protesters en masse, they will be rejecting not just the 2017 election terms, but the basic terms of Hong Kong's relationship with the central Chinese government.
It is simply too early to tell which direction these protests will go. Although early indications suggest that thousands of residents began joining the students in protest on Sunday, it's not clear if this will grow significantly larger, as is probably necessary to force change, or will fizzle out under police pressure. However it resolves, though, this is a potentially decisive moment for Hong Kong and the uncertainty that has hung over its future ever since 1997.
