HKFP Lens: Scenes from Hong Kong’s 2014 Umbrella Movement

The protest that would become Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, a largely peaceful 79-day pro-democracy civil disobedience campaign, began with class boycotts on September 22, 2014.

Thousands of students eschewed school and university to gather outside the government headquarters to protest at a decision reached by China’s top legislative body on political reform in Hong Kong. It would give Hongkongers the right to vote for their leader, but only from candidates approved by Beijing.

The following weekend, they were joined by thousands more after legal scholar Benny Tai announced the beginning of Occupy Central with Love and Peace, a civil disobedience campaign to call for true universal suffrage, in the early hours of September 28.

People assembled throughout the day, forcing the closure of Harcourt Road, until, at 5.58 pm, tear gas was fired into the crowd. It was the first time since the 1967 riots that police had used tear gas against Hongkongers, and marked the start of an operation that continued throughout the night and dispersed protesters to other sites on Hong Kong Island. Another occupation emerged along Nathan Road in Mong Kok.

The following day, police said they had used tear gas 87 times at nine locations, with assistant commissioner Cheung Tak-keung telling reporters that officers had used “minimum force.” Protesters held umbrellas to shield themselves from pepper spray and projectiles, which is where the movement’s name came from.

After bringing areas of the city to a standstill for more than two months, the Umbrella Movement ended on December 15, when the last of the protest encampments were cleared away following court injunctions. Many of those associated with the campaign, including Tai and student activist Joshua Wong, were later convicted over their roles in the protests.