Mr Benny Tai Yiu-ting, the Reverend Chu Yiu-ming and Dr Chan Kin-man, co-founders of the Occupy Central movement, were joined by other protesters today (December 3) in surrendering themselves to the Police for having participated in an unauthorized assembly. The Business and Professionals Alliances for Hong Kong (BPA) takes this opportunity to urge all protesters to come to their senses and return home as soon as possible.
Mr Andrew Leung Kwan-yuen, BPA Chairman, cited the modified catchphrase “Rome was not built in one day but the city can be destroyed within that timeframe” to describe the impact of the two-month long protests. He added that over the 67 days of civil disobedience, protesters had been escalating their activities over that time to the point of engaging in violent and bloody clashes. They have undermined the rule of law in Hong Kong by willfully refusing to obey the injunction orders issued by the court. They have run roughshod over the core values that people in Hong Kong have held dear over the many years by obfuscating right and wrong. The Occupy Movement co-founders should also be held responsible for the breakdown in trust between the Police and the citizenry and a deeply divided society.
Mr Leung pointed out that the manner in which the illegal Occupy Movement was conducted was a betrayal of the so-called principles of “Love and Peace” bragged about by the three co-founders. Although their surrender to the authorities comes as something that is too little, too late, they and other perpetrators of the Occupy Movement should be held fully accountable for their actions. Mr Leung repeated his call for protestors to leave the streets and return home so that order could return to society.
In response to public opinion, the government should take measures to quickly restore normal traffic conditions. It should also establish a multilateral platform to facilitate the roll-out of the second round of consultations on constitutional development that will pave the way to universal suffrage in 2017 when 5 million voters will have the right to decide their Chief Executive through “one person, one vote”.