C.Y. Leung issues strongest warning yet to Occupy Central protesters

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying has issued his strongest warning yet about clearing the nine-week-old Occupy Central protest sites, hours after overnight clashes between police and pro-democracy protesters who laid siege to government headquarters in Admiralty.

He warned that just because police had not yet taken action to clear protesters, the demonstrators it was not because they were incapable of doing so and their inaction was not a sign of weakness.

The administration yesterday issued a statement condemning "violent radicals" who repeatedly attempted to storm government headquarters and charged police lines.

This morning he expanded upon the theme, blaming the student groups who organised Sunday night's violent protest for drafting in demonstrators from Mong Kok to join the Admiralty protest. Before being shut down by police, demonstrations in Mong Kok had been far more volatile than those on Hong Kong island.

"Now the Federation of Students and Scholarism have mobilised the Mong Kok protesters to Admiralty and Tamar. This worries me very much," he said.

Leung also said there growing calls from the public for sites to be cleared. "Many residents are of the view that there is a limit to their tolerance," he said.

The Causeway Bay sit-in, outside Sogo department store near Yee Wo Street, is the police's next clearance target after Mong Kok, a police source said. They would then close in on the Admiralty zone, in an operation also planned for this month.

Student groups that had incited people to charge the premises on Sunday night admitted they had failed. They would now hold discussions with protesters on the way forward.

Last night Joshua Wong Chi-fung, convenor of student activist group Scholarism, said he and two other group members would stage an indefinite hunger strike to call for an open dialogue with Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor over the relaunch of political reform.

The protests had interrupted government operations in the morning, with a number of meetings changing venue and some civil servants not being able to get to work, but normal operations had resumed by the afternoon.

Federation of Students' secretary general Alex Chow Yong-kang conceded "the plan did not achieve its original objective in the end, which was to paralyse government".

The overnight drama began with the federation and Scholarism urging protesters to gather at the Admiralty encampment on Sunday night. Throughout the night, hundreds of protesters tried to breach police lines near the government complex. Officers used batons, pepper spray and high-pressure water hoses to repel them, and managed to reopen blocked roads the next morning. Police said 40 people were arrested in the commotion.

Watch: Violent clashes in Admiralty overnight after Hong Kong protests escalate

Last night the Hospital Authority said that between 10pm on Sunday night and 2pm yesterday, 58 people, including 11 police officers, were sent to accident and emergency wards.

Twenty-three of the city's 27 pan-democratic lawmakers called on student leaders to stop intensifying their action to avoid more people getting hurt.

Leung said the government did not want to clear the sites unless it was "absolutely necessary".

"We do not want to arrest people, particularly young people and students … as that will leave them with criminal records, which will affect their chances of studying and working overseas."

Professor Lau Siu-kai, vice-chairman of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, described the latest protest escalation as "self-destruction" of the protest leaders.

Lau warned that the radical action would spark an "authoritarian backlash" and regression of democratic development.

In the High Court yesterday, a judge granted cross-border bus company All China Express an interim injunction to clear a section from Connaught Road to Cotton Tree Drive in the Admiralty-Central protest area.

The police source said hundreds of officers were gearing up to act on the rally zone near Sogo next week at the earliest, and would help bailiffs enforce yesterday's injunction in Harcourt Road after that.

Gary Cheung, Clifford Lo, Danny Lee, Tony Cheung, Ernest Kao, Elizabeth Cheung, Julie Chu, Shirley Zhao and Alan Yu