International Shia News Agency

Hong Kong protests: Civil servants at work as numbers dwindle

The protesters are angry at China’s plans to vet candidates when Hong Kong holds elections in 2017.

SHAFAQNA – Hundreds of pro-democracy campaigners remain camped out on the streets of Hong Kong as a government deadline for them to leave passed without incident.

But their numbers dwindled overnight and civil servants have returned to work in the government’s headquarters.

They are demanding that the central government in Beijing allow a fully free vote for the territory’s leader.

The BBC’s Juliana Liu in Hong Kong says the protesters appear to have decided to beat a strategic, possibly temporary, retreat – partly out of sheer exhaustion, as the demonstrations entered their second week.

She says activists have been encouraged by news that student leaders have begun meeting government officials to lay the groundwork for talks on political reform.

Tens of thousands of people have been on the streets in the past week, but only about 100 protesters remained outside government offices at the Admiralty protest site on Monday morning, and just 10 people were sitting outside the chief executive’s office, according to the South China Morning Post earlier on Monday.

Several hundred remain in Mong Kok, north of the harbour, despite earlier calls by organisers for protesters to withdraw from that site, following clashes at the weekend with people opposed to the demonstrations. A smaller number of protesters are still camped out at Causeway Bay.

 

 

Source: BBC News

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