Hong Kong police arrest Admiralty district protesters

Police began to carry protesters away on Thursday afernoon, after tearing down their tents in a final effort to clear streets that activists have occupied for months.

"Leave or face arrest," police said to demonstrators blocking Tim Wa avenue in Hong Kong's Admiralty district.

There was a defiant mood on the part of the pro-democracy campaigners, with Alex Chow of the Hong Kong Federation of Students saying that even if the streets were cleared, the protest was not at an end.

"Civil disobedience will keep repeating in Hong Kong if the government decides to continue to push this fake proposal on to Hong Kong people," said Chow.

The chairman of the Hong Kong Labour Party, Lee Cheuk-yan, told the DPA news agency that many people were preparing to be arrested. "This is a new era for Hong Kong where people will dare to resist," he said.

Authorities had announced they would lock down the site if the hard core of remaining protesters had not left their camp after a final 30-minute lunchtime deadline. Some 400 demonstrators had watched at the Admiralty site as workers, guarded by police, dismantled barricades around the protesters' camp. Television footage showed railings stands being removed piece by piece. Most of the officers present wore normal uniforms in contrast with previous days, when police dressed in riot gear used pepper spray and batons to clear protesters.

Dissatisfaction with election plans

The final warning came as police sought to enforce a December 9 injunction ordering that the site be vacated.

For 75 days, protesters have been demonstrating for free and fair 2017 elections for the semi-autonomous region, without interference from mainland China. In late August, the Beijing government announced that candidates for the leadership elections would first have to be vetted by a loyalist committee.

At their height, the rallies drew tens of thousands of people, but numbers have dwindled to just hundreds in recent weeks.

On what looked to be the final night of protests, chants of "I want real suffrage" could be heard among demonstrators, with some leaving messages in chalk on the asphalt that read: "We will be back."

The mainly peaceful protests in the Chinese-controlled city have represented one of the most serious challenges to Beijing's authority since the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations and bloody crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square.

rc/pfd (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)