Hong Kong officials hold first talks with students
(BBC News, October 21, 2014)
Hong Kong officials have ended their first round of talks with students, with the government's chief negotiator saying she hoped for further meetings with protest leaders.
Students at the talks reiterated their demand for an unrestricted choice of candidates in the election for the territory's chief executive in 2017.
But both Hong Kong and Beijing officials have said this is impossible.
Protests have blocked key parts of the city, although numbers have fallen.
The BBC's Juliana Liu in Hong Kong says that although demonstrators know the chances of getting what they want are almost zero, they are staying on the streets to show authorities that the struggle for democratic reform is a long-term fight. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-29700156
News report on the first government meeting with protestors:
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wandeljw
1
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Sun 26 Oct, 2014 01:50 pm
Quote:
Pro-Democracy Movement’s Vote in Hong Kong Abruptly Called Off
By CHRIS BUCKLEY and ALAN WONG, The New York Times, OCT. 26, 2014
HONG KONG — Organizers of a planned vote among Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrators abruptly canceled it on Sunday, exposing tensions and confusion over how to sustain the movement a month after protesters occupied major streets to demand free elections.
Student leaders and organizers of Occupy Central With Love and Peace, the group that laid the groundwork for a civil disobedience campaign for democracy, had urged people to vote at protest sites on Sunday and Monday as a way of registering their support for student negotiators seeking political concessions from the government.
The referendum boiled down to two simple questions: Did voters endorse demanding that the Hong Kong government press Beijing to make democratic concessions on election rules, and did they agree that the changes should apply to city Legislative Council elections in 2016 and the race for chief executive in 2017?
'No Room' For Further Dialogue With Students: Hong Kong Government
The Hong Kong government on Tuesday ruled out further dialogue with student leaders of a mass pro-democracy protest that has blocked major roads in the former British colony for six weeks, as a court gave the green light to police to arrest anyone blocking roads it has ordered cleared.
Carrie Lam, second-in-command to embattled chief executive C.Y. Leung, called on protesters who remain encamped on the highway near government headquarters in Admiralty, as well as those occupying busy intersections in the shopping districts of Causeway Bay and Mong Kok, to leave peacefully.
She hit out at the influential Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS) for "hardening" its stance following the live televised debate during which Lam and fellow officials offered to file a fresh report to Beijing taking the Occupy Central movement's call for universal suffrage into account.
"The [Hong Kong] government went into the two-hour dialogue on Oct. 21 with sincerity, and promised to work to move things forward," Lam told a news conference. "The student federation didn't show the same level of sincerity; in fact their position hardened after the debate."
She said the students' insistence that China's parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC) withdraw an Aug. 31 decision ruling out the public nomination of candidates in 2017 elections for the chief executive "is not in keeping with" Hong Kong's mini-constitution, the Basic Law.
I find it bizarre to the point of unbelievable that after watching how China has dealt with Tibet and the other non Han areas that they are assimilating that things would go any differently for the British cultured people of Hong Kong. London and the people of this city had to know this was coming. The people of Taiwan should know that this is their future two, there is no way America could prevent it even if we wanted to do so.
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carloslebaron
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Fri 14 Nov, 2014 11:08 pm
The irony is that here in the US only one third of the population voted this November, showing that "democracy" is going down together with the economy.
We must face that the original intent when democracy was idealized, carried honesty and care for everybody's benefit from the politicians side. They were the "servants" of the People.
Today, politicians had acquire so many privileges and so much power that they are the new "feudalists" of the past, with the only difference that now they are elected by the People.
There is no democratic country in the world without a corrupt government, the politicians have transformed themselves into a complete herd of bribes.
No wonder why people, who read about their corruption, are just staying at home instead of going out and vote.
The democratic system is falling, it was an obvious decay.
Can you ask an atheist to pray God for a miracle? Well, religion is not for everybody. The same happens with the political system of each country.
In China, the young adults are the easiest to be manipulated, and they can't see that their current system is the best for them, as Saddam Hussein was the best for Iraq years ago. Today, Iraq is not the powerful nation of the past, and guerrillas are taking control of many areas of this country. Iraq is now a democratic country but is a mess, a complete mess, and regardless of any effort, there won't be any fix for them. Only another dictator in Iraq will control that country as it was before, and can make it as a great country feared by their neighbors, and will find peace inside its borders.
A democratic change in China at this moment of uprising in economical power will delay or stop its development. Unfortunately for China, and fortunately for the West, the Chinese young adults are easy prey to be brainwashed and keep up with their democratic ideologies.
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