To fear a repeat of the tiananmen square massacre in Hong kong

[ReallyTired]

The Hong protestors seem to have lot in common with the optimistic students who were murdered in the tiananmen square massacre of 1989. I feel the international community should put pressure on China to find a peaceful compromise.

Thanks for the clarification AggressiveBunting.

Agree with you that storming/occupying a government building is a bad idea, no shade of government would turn a blind eye to that.

That's the problem. They are "poking the dragon" as we call it. I think the protest leaders have realised that the public is losing interest and so needs to escalate, but the cops cannot just let protesters infiltrate government buildings, so tonight will get messy if the protesters press on with that plan. Local news reports are now saying that the police are making a big show of moving tear gas etc into prominent buildings, presumably to try to deter this course of action. Just heard schools are closed again tomorrow, which isn't really surprising, as we just had a 2 day PH and then it's the weekend, so hopefully that's not indicative of expectations on tonight.

Thanks bunting I must have misunderstood.

I do think that, at some point, they will clear the streets.

BBC has just reported that numbers are down a bit. I doubt the authorities will expect them to subside completely, but waiting until some of the impetus has gone would make clearance easier.

Yes, though I'm more fearful that Ferguson, US and other similar US protests at the moment are going to turn to a 1985 Philadelphia situation, or a Kent state, or a Tulsa situation (or the dozens upon dozens of other times the US police/military have been used against civilian protests). The Ferguson protests involve children as well being tear gassed, dealing with dogs and bullets flying and other police brutality.

Great analysis, AggressiveBunting

There has been violence, particularly in Mongkok in Kowloon over the weekend, although it's hard to determine whether the anti-pro democracy(!) demonstrators are paid agent provocateurs, Triads or disaffected local residents who are losing money after a week of disruption. I suspect a mixture of all three. Many on the Pro side are calling foul that the police are not cracking down hard enough on this aggressive behaviour, and also on alleged sexual molestation of female protestors.

Having been in London for most of the week, and now back here in Hong Kong, it was interesting to see how the UK media were reporting. From the sublime - a fantastic interview by Sarah Montague on the Today programme where she subtly undermined a rather patronising Mainland academic, to the frankly ridiculous - Sky news alarmist talk on Tuesday or Wednesday of HK introducing martial law, it has been something of a mixed bag. Here the two main Chinese language papers have completely polarised views on the demonstrators, while the English language South China Morning Post is broadly supportive of the Pro-democracy movement.

I'm not sure how it will play out, but as pp have said, these students are very young, and after a week of protest are hot, tired and emotionally drained. But boy, have they conducted themselves well, and with a respectful maturity belying their years. The sight of these young men and women sweeping up their rubbish, sorting their recycling, doing their homework and for the most part maintaining a peaceful and dignified stance in their opposition to CY Leung and the Hong Kong government has been pretty edifying to witness, regardless of the eventual outcome of the protests.