Hong Kong’s outspoken Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, 82, handed himself into police during an Occupy Central protest in the city on Wednesday in a bid to end the campaign that began more than two months ago.
The cardinal, who has long been a critic of Beijing and a campaigner for universal suffrage, went with the founders of Occupy Central, sociologist Chan Kin-man, law professor Benny Tai Yiu-ting, and Baptist minister Chu Yiu-ming to the Central Police Station in Hong Kong.
The four told officers they wanted to be arrested for illegally occupying public places in an act of civil disobedience.
The police did not arrest them but asked them to fill in forms giving their personal information, and told them that the protests were “illegal”. The men left the police station after only an hour, though officers told the protestors they would be invited back to the station at an appropriate time. As he left the premises the cardinal asked the people gathered outside to pray for democracy.
The cardinal’s successor as bishop of Hong Kong, John Tong, in a statement urged “all sides to respect the rule of law” and pray for an end to “the present impasse”. China warned on Sunday that the Commons foreign affairs committee would be denied entry to Hong Kong if they went ahead with a planned visit to the former British colony. The cross-party group of MPs had been planning to visit as part of an inquiry into Hong Kong’s relations with the UK, 30 years after the joint declaration that led to the handover of the island to Chinese control in 1997.
Students who have been camping in the Admiralty district, the eastern extension of the central business district, were on Friday weighing up whether to continue their protests or pack up their tents and return home. The week began with the student protestors trying to shut down government offices in one of the worst outbursts of violence since the Occupy Central protests began.
At least 40 people were reportedly hospitalised after police used batons and pepper spray to dispel the crowds. In November Cardinal Zen wrote on his blog that in the fight for democracy a "miracle may take place, like David hurls a stone to hit down Goliath. And no one would expect that the Berlin Wall fell down all of a sudden 25 years ago."
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