Top Chinese official heckled by Hong Kong protesters

A protester shouts slogans at a pro-democracy rally next to the Hong Kong government complex, on August 31, 2014 (AFP Photo/Alex Ogle)

Hong Kong (AFP) - A senior #Chinese official was angrily heckled by #HongKong protesters Monday as he tried to defend Beijing's landmark decision to control which candidates can stand in the city's next leadership election.

Li Fei, a member of the top committee of China's rubber stamp parliament, was forced to speak over the cries of pro-democracy lawmakers and protesters during a meeting with local officials in the southern Chinese city.

His visit comes a day after the standing committee of the National People's Congress announced that although Hong Kong's next chief executive will be elected by popular vote in 2017, candidates must be backed by more than half the members of a "broadly representative nominating committee".

Democracy activists have called the restrictive framework a betrayal of Beijing's promise to award Hong Kong universal suffrage and have vowed an "era of civil disobedience" including mass sit-ins.

They say the nominating committee would ensure a sympathetic slate of candidates and exclude opponents of Beijing.

As Li approached the lectern to speak at the Asia World Expo convention centre, veteran dissident lawmaker Leung Kwok-hung started shouting him down, his fist raised in the air.

He was then joined by a dozen pro-democracy lawmakers and some younger demonstrators who unfurled a banner in front of the lectern where Li was speaking from and chanted: "The central government broke its promise, shameless."

The meeting was briefly suspended while security officers removed the hecklers.

Li flew into Hong Kong from Beijing late Sunday and was forced to drive past a crowd of largely student protesters who had gathered outside his hotel in the kind of scenes that would be unthinkable on the Chinese mainland.

Britain handed Hong Kong back to China on July 1, 1997 under a "one country, two systems" agreement which allows residents civil liberties not seen on the mainland, including free speech and the right to protest.

Following Beijing's decision to vet candidates, the pro-democracy group Occupy Central said Sunday it would go ahead with its threat to take over the city's Central financial district in protest, at an unspecified date. AFP

Police offer HK$300,000 bounty to find ex-boyfriend of murdered Dragonair hostess

Mok Chun-yin (right) is suspected of killing his former girlfriend Arbe Chan (left) whose body was found in a wardrobe in her Tsuen Wan last year.

Police have put up a HK$300,000 reward to find a 26-year-old man suspected of killing his former girlfriend, a Dragonair flight attendant whose body was found in a wardrobe in her Tsuen Wan flat last December.

Mok Chun-yin, alias Ah Shui, is wanted in connection with the gruesome case of the cupboard corpse at Allway Gardens on December 8.

The former estate agent is understood to have fled to the mainland before the body of Arbe Chan Man-yi, also 26, was found.

"He was the ex-boyfriend of the deceased," the police said in a reward notice yesterday.

Abrasions were found on Chan's neck, right elbow and knees, according to police.

"The cause of death was ligature strangulation and the time of death was around the afternoon on December 4," the notice said.

Chief Inspector Philip Lui Chi-ho, of Tsuen Wan police, said the reward offer did not mean they were short of leads in the hunt for the suspect.

Instead, it demonstrated the "seriousness" with which the force was handling the case. "Police are treating him as a murder suspect," Lui said.

The body of Chan was found under clothes and other items in her wardrobe when her father and younger sister searched the two-bedroom home.

The family had not heard from her for several days but initially thought she was at work and out of town.

Postings on Chan's Facebook page indicated she had suffered emotional problems because of Mok. They met in 2012, but their relationship soured in the middle of last year and she wanted to break up with him and recover money he owed her.

In September, she called police, saying her boyfriend had beaten her. He was charged and placed on a good behaviour bond by Tuen Mun Court.

According to the police website, the latest reward offer is one of 15 totalling HK$5.1 million that the force is offering in its hunt for suspects in 15 murder cases.

The oldest outstanding case is the 22-year-old murder of a woman, 34, found dead at her home in Ma On Shan in 1992. A HK$300,000 reward is on offer for clues leading to Chan Wai-lun, then aged 30.

The highest reward offered is HK$600,000 for information leading to the arrest of three alleged Wo Shing Wo triad members over the death of Lee Tai-lung, chief of the Tsim Sha Tsui faction of the Sun Yee On triad.

Lee, 41, was hit by a car outside the Kowloon Shangri-La hotel and hacked to death in August 2009.
--SCMP

Organisers of huge Hong Kong rally arrested

Demonstrators march during a pro-democracy rally in Hong Kong on July 1, 2014 as frustration grows over the influence of Beijing on the city (AFP Photo/Philippe Lopez)

Police on Friday arrested the organisers of #HongKong's biggest pro-democracy rally since the city was handed back to China, sparking outrage from campaigners who denounced the "political suppression".

Five members of the Civil Human Rights Front, including its convener, were arrested three days after the march, which the group said mobilised half a million people to voice anger at Beijing's ever-tightening grip on Hong Kong.

"They are making arrests even though we have had such a peaceful procession," the group's convener Johnson Yeung said after two of his colleagues were picked from their homes on Friday morning.

"This isn't about any one reason, this is about political suppression," he told reporters before surrendering to police with two others from the group.

Police did not immediately comment on the arrests.

But the group's vice convener Icarus Wong told AFP that they were arrested on frivolous charges including "obstruction of police duties" during the largely peaceful rally.

A Hong Kong lawmaker on Thursday hurled a glass of water at the city's Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, expressing anger over his perceived silence on the July 1 rally, television footage showed.

The glass missed Leung as he brushed off criticism from pro-democracy lawmakers, who later walked out of the legislative assembly.

"Leung Chun-ying does not want to respond after more than 500,000 people took to the streets but instead he is taking these actions to show he wants to suppress organisers of rallies to make us afraid," Yeung said.

Security officials arrested 511 protesters at a sit-in early Wednesday following the July 1 rally for illegal assembly or obstructing police.

Police hauled activists, many lying on the ground with their arms chained to each other, onto coaches that took them to a temporary detention centre. All protesters have since been released.

Discontent in Hong Kong is at its highest level in years over Beijing's insistence that it vet candidates before a vote in 2017 for the city's next leader.

Pro-democracy group Occupy Central has said it will stage a mass sit-in later this year unless authorities come up with acceptable electoral reforms.

Hong Kong enjoys liberties not seen on the mainland, including free speech and the right to protest, but there are heightened fears that those freedoms are being eroded. Yahoo. News

Police arrest 500 after large-scale Hong Kong protest

Hong Kong police arrested more than 500 protesters at a sit-in early Wednesday following a huge pro-democracy rally that organisers said mobilised half a million people demanding the right to choose their next leader.

The arrests came at the end of a largely peaceful #rally on Tuesday that protest leaders said brought the biggest crowds onto the streets since the city was handed over from Britain to China in 1997.
Waving colonial-era flags and shouting anti-Beijing chants, protesters carried banners emblazoned with slogans including "We want real democracy" and "We stand united against #China".

Discontent in the city of seven million people is at its highest level in years over Beijing's insistence that it vet candidates before a vote in 2017 for the semi-autonomous city's next leader.

At the end of Tuesday's march, hundreds of people joined a sit-in in #HongKong's Central financial district, with police moving in at 3:00 am to break up the protest.

Police arrested "511 people who were participating in an assembly that was not approved", a police spokesman told AFP. Pro-democracy lawmakers were among those detained, local media reported.
Hong Kong enjoys liberties not seen on the mainland, including free speech and the right to protest, but there are heightened fears that those freedoms are being eroded.

Concerns increased in June when Beijing published a controversial "white paper" on Hong Kong's future that was widely seen as a warning to the city not to overstep its bounds.

After the document was published, nearly 800,000 people took part in an unofficial referendum ballot calling for Hong Kong's voters to be allowed a say in the nomination of candidates in the 2017 election.
Beijing branded the vote "illegal and invalid".

Beijing's state-run China Daily said Tuesday's march proved that Hong Kong's "citizens have continued to enjoy rights and freedoms since the handover".

But dissidents were "trying to hijack political reform with regards to the process for electing the chief executive" and had "resorted to unlawful activities" to pursue their goal, it said, in a reference to the recent unofficial referendum.

The pro-Beijing Hong Kong Commercial Daily warned that the protest movement risked damaging the city's freewheeling economy.

"To prevent Hong Kong from changing beyond imagination, one should make extra efforts to treasure the current stability and prosperity," the paper said in an editorial.

"Imagine an economy without prosperity, with people being jobless and industries dysfunctioning, it would be difficult to talk about livelihoods," it said.

Pro-democracy group Occupy Central, which organised the referendum, has said that it will stage a mass sit-in in the city's business district later this year unless authorities come up with acceptable electoral reforms.

China has promised to let all Hong Kong residents vote for their next leader instead of the 1,200-strong pro-Beijing committee that currently chooses the city's chief executive.
But Beijing says candidates must be approved by a nomination committee, which democracy advocates fear will mean only pro-China figures are allowed to stand.

The United States gave its support to voices calling for Hong Kong's voters to be given a say in who can run in 2017, while acknowledging that details of the election were still to be set in stone.
"We believe that the legitimacy of this person will be enhanced if universal suffrage is fulfilled and if the election provides a genuine choice of candidates that are representative of the voters' will," said US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf.

The pro-reform Apple Daily newspaper welcomed Tuesday's rally, which saw swarms of protesters pour onto clogged streets through the afternoon and evening despite soaring humidity and rainstorms, as "a repeat of the '03 miracle".

It was a reference to a massive rally in 2003 where half a million people took to the streets against a national security bill that was later shelved.

Rally organiser Johnson Yeung said at least 510,000 protesters joined the rally. The figure was believed to be a record for July 1 protests, an annual outpouring of discontent.
Official estimates were more conservative, with police saying 98,600 people took part during the "peak" of the rally.

One of those marching, the chairman of the Hong Kong post office union, Ip Kam-fu, said he joined the rally to protect the next generation, accusing the city's government of kowtowing to Beijing.
"This march is not for us, it's for our children. Without universal suffrage there's no way to monitor the government," he said. Telegraph News