20 arrested in HK ahead of protest site clearance

A total of 20 protesters in the Mong Kok area were detained on Sunday shortly before Hong Kong police began clearing the last Occupy Central protest site in Causeway Bay, police announced.

Police seized these protesters, who ranged in age from 15 to 65, in Mong Kok on suspicion of unlawful assembly and obstructing police officers in the execution of their duties. The Mong Kok protest sites were previously cleared on November 25 and 26. Nearly 100 protesters gathered along roads in Mong Kok early Sunday morning for a so-called "shopping exercise" in which protesters walked through and shouted slogans in crowded shopping areas, according to Hong Kong newspaper Oriental Daily. The majority of the protestors left the sites on Sunday after warnings from police at the scene, according to a press release issued by the Hong Kong Police Force.

Such "shopping exercises" have occurred frequently in Mong Kok since the protest site there was cleared, police said. Protesters used shopping as an excuse to assemble every night and disrupt public transportation and business in the area, sometimes interfering with shopkeepers who tried to close their shops.

Police arrested seven people during "shopping exercises" in Mong Kok on Friday and Saturday for obstructing police officers.

"These harassing acts harmed the business of innocent shop owners and the livelihoods of their employees … This has damaged the image of Hong Kong as an international city," Hui Chun-tak, the Chief Superintendent of the Police Public Relations Branch of the Hong Kong Police Force, said in a press release on Saturday. Benny Tai Yiu-ting, co-organizer of Occupy Central, warned on Saturday that some protesters might take radical or even violent action in the future since they have become frustrated with the current peaceful protests, Hong Kong media organization Ta Kung Pao reported.

In response, police vowed to boost efforts to target these "shopping exercises," the South China Morning Post reported. The policemen are beginning to clear the protest site on Yee Wo Street in Causeway Bay, the final site of the two-and-a-half-month-long Occupy Central protest, on Monday morning.