HONG KONG: Police moved in Monday to clear Hong Kong's last remaining pro-democracy protest site with just a handful of demonstrators making a final stand, after the main camp was demolished last week.
After more than two months of rallies, a committed core of a dozen protesters staged a sit-in at the centre of the last site in the busy shopping district of Causeway Bay as police cut away barricades and took down banners.
It is the smallest of the three camps that sprang up in late September, paralysing sections of the city, as part of a student-led campaign for free leadership elections.
Activists occupied major traffic arteries after China said in August that candidates for the city's chief executive elections in 2017 would first be vetted by a loyalist committee, a move campaigners said will ensure a pro-Beijing stooge in the leadership role.
The main Admiralty camp which sprawled across a kilometre of multi-lane highway through the heart of the business district was cleared Thursday with more than 200 protesters arrested.
Police cleared the other major protest site in the working-class commercial district of Mongkok -- scene of some of the most violent clashes since the campaign began -- in late November.
Protesters had been given a 30-minute warning to disperse from Causeway Bay before police set up a cordon around the camp Monday.
Five members of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, which has spearheaded the street protests, were among the sit-in group and said they were willing to face arrest.
They were joined by a 90-year-old campaigner surnamed Wong who sat in a wheelchair behind the barricades as police approached.
"I will let them arrest me," he said.
"We must do it regardless of whether we can achieve anything. We have to get back what they owe us."
Supporters outside the cordon chanted "we want true universal suffrage" as police began to dismantle the barricades.
"If anyone refuses to leave, police will take dispersal or arrest action," a police spokesman said in an announcement before the clearance began.
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