Ugly scenes as police beat prominent activist and detain dozens more demostrators who want Beijing to allow democratic election

Hundreds of Hong Kong police officers drove protesters from a tunnel in the dead of night in the worst violence since the street demonstrations for greater democracy began more than two weeks ago.

Officers, many with riot shields and wielding pepper spray, dragged away dozens of protesters, tore down barricades and removed concrete slabs the protesters used as road blocks around the underpass.

The clampdown comes amid increasing impatience in Beijing over the political crisis in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. A front-page editorial on Wednesday in the People’s Daily of the ruling Communist party’s condemned the protests and said “they are doomed to fail”.

“Facts and history tell us that radical and illegal acts that got their way only result in more severe illegal activities, exacerbating disorder and turmoil,” the commentary said, referring to the activists.

“Stability is bliss and turmoil brings havoc.”

The operation came hours after a large group of demonstrators blockaded the tunnel, expanding their protest zone after being cleared out of some other streets. The protesters outnumbered the police officers, who later returned with reinforcements to clear the area.

Officers took away many protesters, their hands tied with plastic cuffs, and pushed others out to a nearby park.

Police said they had to disperse the protesters because they were disrupting public order and gathering illegally. They arrested 45 activists during the clashes, which police said injured four officers.

“I have to stress here that even though protesters raised their hands in their air it does not mean it was a peaceful protest,” said the spokesman, Tsui Wai-Hung. He said some protesters kicked the officers and attacked them with umbrellas.

Local television channel TVB showed footage of around six police officers taking a man around the side of a building, placing him on the ground and kicking him. Legislators and activists identified the protester as Ken Tsang, a member of a local pro-democracy political party who in 2012 interrupted Leung’s inauguration by heckling then-Chinese president Hu Jintao.

Ken Tsang, a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist, is taken away by police before they were filmed beating him in a side street. Photograph: Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images

Hong Kong’s security chief said the officers involved had been reassigned to other posts and the department was carrying out an investigation.

The student-led protesters are into their third week of occupying key parts of the city to pressure its government over curbs recommended by Beijing on democratic reforms.

They oppose plans for a pro-Beijing committee to screen candidates to run in Hong Kong’s first direct elections to choose a leader, called a chief executive, in 2017. They also want the current chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, to resign.

Leung has said there is “almost zero chance” that China’s government will change its rules for the election.

Positions on both sides have been hardening since the government called off negotiations last week, citing the unlikelihood of a constructive outcome given their sharp differences.

The demonstrations have posed an unprecedented challenge to the government. Organizers say as many as 200,000 people thronged the streets for peaceful sit-ins after police used tear gas on 28 September to disperse unarmed protesters. The numbers have since dwindled.

Police have chipped away at the protest zones in three areas across the city by removing barricades from around the edges. On Tuesday they used chainsaws and sledgehammers to tear them down.



Beijing is eager to end the protests to avoid emboldening activists and others on the mainland seen as a threat to the Communist party’s monopoly on power.

In a statement from the central government’s liaison office in Hong Kong, director Zhang Xiaoming told city legislators at a banquet on Tuesday that the protest movement “is a serious social and political incident that has violated the ‘one country’ principle, challenged the central authority” and was “an illegal activity that openly violates Hong Kong’s current law”.

“It has not only brought to Hong Kong economic losses in tens of millions of yuan, affected the livelihood of vast numbers of citizens, but also hurt the basis of Hong Kong’s rule of law, democratic development, social harmony, international image and its relations with the mainland,” Zhang said, calling for the movement to be ended as soon as possible.