Folding the umbrellas

IT WAS the most sustained street campaign for democracy in China since the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Yet the protests in Hong Kong ended very differently. Instead of using tanks and machine-guns to clear the streets, police in Hong Kong ended 79 days of sit-ins on busy roads in the city armed with court orders, pepper spray and cutting tools to dismantle barricades. Dozens of people were arrested, but most left the three protest sites (the last and smallest was cleared on December 15th) without attempting to resist. The Hong Kong government, by refusing the protesters’ demands for free elections and largely ignoring them, had worn them down.

It was not always so orderly. The protests erupted in late September in a fog of tear-gas; the umbrellas students tried to use to protect themselves became the symbol of their movement. But the authorities quickly decided it would be better to wait the protesters out. Public support for them ebbed as the disruption to traffic grew more irksome. Eventually courts accepted complaints by those whose businesses were suffering and ordered bailiffs to move in. Those arrested in the clearing operations, which began in late November, included prominent pro-democracy politicians such as Martin Lee, a lawyer, and Jimmy Lai, a newspaper publisher.