"I predict that if you continue to allow this slide then in five or six years time Hong Kong will be completely changed. You chip away at the rule of law, you start to affect the independence of the judiciary, you clamp down even harder on our rights and freedoms and you increasingly resort to patronage, cronyism. Even the police and the ICAC [Independent Commission Against Corruption] we perceive to be increasingly becoming political tools of the government. This is very worrying. It is a watershed."