Occupy Central one year on - the key players look back in anger and anguish

On Saturdays, often under a scorching sun, Dr Chan Kin-man meets his allies in Ng Tung Chai to hike to the city's highest peak, Tai Mo Shan. They are gearing up for the annual Oxfam Trailwalker fundraiser in November. This is the challenge Chan, who has not exercised for more than a decade because of knee injuries, has set for himself after the civil disobedience movement he co-led with student leaders ended a year ago. The 'umbrella movement' changed the lives of many Hongkongers, even though it failed in its goal to achieve "one person, one vote" when Hong Kong picks its next leader in 2017. Chan, a Chinese University sociologist, co-founded the Occupy Central movement with University of Hong Kong law professor Benny Tai Yiu-ting and Reverend Chu Yiu-ming. A year after the mass sit-ins ended, the key organisers have done their share of reflecting on how they could have succeeded, though they still have not sat down together for a thorough review. Their consensus: there were two turning points that changed the course of events and made them veer off script, but they could not stop the tide. To Chan, the ending of the Occupy sit-in was almost pre- ordained. On September 28 last year, Chan, Tai and Chu announced the movement would support students who had stormed the forecourt at the government headquarters and were facing arrest. But their gambit, to the trio's surprise, proved unpopular as some protesters who rallied outside the square felt they were trying to hijack the students' cause. That was the first turning point: the trio realised they did not enjoy a mandate to lead the movement and decided to take a backseat and assist the student leaders from behind the scenes. It was also a turning point as the government played its hand to focus on the heads of the Federation of Students, who were student leaders of the city's eight universities, for negotiations, leaving the trio out in the cold. This led to a split between students and the trio. The rest was history, with the trio later choosing to leave to ensure protesters' safety, while students remained in the streets and eventually initiated an attempt to besiege government headquarters, resulting in injuries. Today, Chan says he understands the dilemma the student leaders faced back then, and why they escalated their action. "Witnessing the collapse of the federation today, we can picture how the student leaders were sandwiched between our voices and those of the radicals during the protest. They were just trying to find a middle ground," Chan recalls. Signs of the federation collapsing emerged right after Occupy ended, with a disaffiliation campaign by students who accused the leaders of either not being radical enough or making hasty decisions in secret. "That's why I said there's no alternative … It's almost destiny," Chan says. Tai shares the same sentiment, while Chu and some middlemen express reservations over the students' decision not to accept a government proposal to submit a report reflecting Hongkongers' sentiments to Beijing and walking away from dialogue with officials. "The students felt they were not respected by the government," Tai says. "In that situation, you were under great pressure and you got limited information. I believe students and ourselves had already made the best judgments we could." The second turning point - the one mistake Tai regrets making - was his failure to insist on a referendum to let protesters decide whether to end the occupation in October, after the sit-ins had dragged on for a month and a televised dialogue between students and government officials bore no fruit. Tai had initiated the vote via phone apps and the students agreed to decide on two motions: urging the government to get Beijing to withdraw the electoral framework, and another working to abolish nominated seats in the Legislative Council and direct nominations for the 2017 election, rather than via a committee. In the end, the vote got nowhere. The diehard protesters who stayed out overnight were fearful that a vote could prematurely end their street occupation and predictably they gave a lukewarm response. Student leaders, discouraged by the reaction, gave up quickly. But the protesters included many who did not always stay overnight and could have had their say. Tai says: "The problem of mass movements is they are dominated by radicals. An electronic vote would have been a useful decision-making mechanism to allow those who did not stay overnight to have a say. "If I had insisted the vote go ahead, it might not have changed the ending of Occupy, but it would have set a precedent for social movements. In the future we would have the referendum as a tool to make collective decisions." Alex Chow Yong-kang, former secretary-general of the Federation of Students, agrees that scrapping the vote was a mistake. "It was a stalemate at that time and we could not think of a way out after giving up the vote idea," he says. But looking back, Chow rues the limited focus of the movement and that it was only driven by the election methods for the chief executive. He says they felt hemmed in by the tight time frame - the legislature was supposed to have a reform proposal for 2017 to vote on this year. Hence, the leaders and participants wanted to get rid of the Beijing framework as soon as possible, without thinking about what other objectives to pursue. "We missed the chance to deepen our movement and the democratic discourse," Chow says. "What is the relationship between democracy and economic development and people's livelihood? The televised dialogue was a good opportunity for publicity and for us to tell people our thoughts and woo those in the opposition camp over. "But we were focusing on the technical arguments ... And so the government continued to gain ground running their argument that 'Occupy affects the economy'." Looking ahead, Chow hopes people will stop the finger-pointing about who should be held responsible for the movement's failure, as it is wearying and makes it difficult to think of the next steps ahead. Chan agrees. He also believes it is too early for history to judge the impact of the movement. "It was only a few weeks ago that we saw a sea of Malaysians singing Under the Vast Sky in their yellow shirts. You never know how far the snowballing effect could go," Chan says, referring to an anti-government rally in Kuala Lumpur in August in which protesters wore the same colour and sang the same theme song as Occupy participants. "The effects brought by the Occupy protest to the Communist Party's governance, the Leung Chun-ying regime and the democracy fight of our next generation should not be seen in the short term," he adds. On the other side, those in the anti-Occupy camp maintain they fail to understand why the protesters rejected Beijing's framework for reform. Irons Sze Wing-wai, a spokesman for the Alliance for Peace and Democracy, says: "It was the best reform opportunity available. Now the chance is gone." He sees little hope of getting a more liberal scheme than Beijing's framework in the near future. Then there is the role of the other player: the police. Commenting on the strained relationship between the police and protesters, Joe Chan Cho-kwong, chairman of Junior Police Officers' Association, says his colleagues have held sharing sessions to review their work on the frontline. They have mostly recovered from the stress and pressure, and Chan adds. "The police relationship with the public is not as bad as reported. At community level, we don't feel we are unwelcome in our daily routine." Chan dismisses suggestions that officers would feel put off or deterred from handling future mass protests. Rather, he adds: "We are now more confident and experienced in dealing with situations like that." Even though there might not be any reform progress in the near future, Chan Kin-man believes there is much for civil society to do, such as protecting Hong Kong's core values from Beijing's "invisible hands". He is optimistic about the city's future. "Various polls have suggested the movement won support from some 60 per cent of young people as well as those with higher education. We might have lost the past but have won the future." Tai too strikes an upbeat note. "When the reform forces are supported by half the population, the tipping point for the authorities to concede reform will come."

Occupy Central one year on - the key players look back in anger and anguish

A year on from the start of the Occupy protests, some key players reflect on the momentous events that shook the city