Court orders Hong Kong protesters to quit demo site

Hong King's High Court published a ruling on Tuesday for three of the major protest sites in the Admiralty government and financial district to be cleared, prompting expectations of a confrontation with police.

Bailiffs are to enforce the order on Thursday morning, with authorities asking protesters to leave voluntarily before they arrive. The injunction was requested by a bus company and allows the bailiffs to "request the assistance of police" to clear a protest zone near government headquarters.

While the ruling only covers parts of the Admiralty area, there were reports that police would clear the entire place, having already declared the protests illegal.

"I think if they clear the whole of Admiralty, because (although) the injunction is only for one area, people are going to react violently," one protester told the AFP news agency.

Demonstrators, led principally by students, are demanding free leadership elections for the semi-autonomous Chinese city in 2017. However, China's communist authorities insist that candidates must first undergo a vetting procedure carried out by a loyalist committee.

Appeal to leave in advance

Bus company lawyer Paul Tse told reporters that the injunction would be enforced from 9 a.m. (0100 GMT) on Thursday.

"What I would like to do now is to perhaps make a public plea to the students to stay away from the scene when there is plenty of time," he told reporters,

According to the South China Post newspaper, some 3,000 police officers were to be deployed for the operation.

A protest site in the working class Mong Kok neighborhood was closed by authorities last month under a different court order. The police operation surrounding that clearance met withresistance that resulted in about 160 arrests.

There were expectations that a third protest site in the Causeway Bay district would also be dismantled on Thursday.

rc/shs (AFP, AP, Reuters)