Three leaders of the Hong Kong Occupy Central protests have announced their surrender, and have urged student activists to leave their encampments and go home.
The move follows falling support for the movement in recent weeks and a splintering in the movement.
At a press conference Tuesday, intellectuals Benny Tai, Chan Kin-man and Rev Chu Yiu-ming said they would hand themselves in to Hong Kong police, citing an “out of control” police force from whom they could no longer protect the young protesters.
“We can see that some frontline police officers seem to be out of control,” said Tai. “How much more violence will there be? Our call to retreat now is out of love for the occupiers. At this moment we should all protect ourselves and leave this very dangerous place.”
After witnessing the escalating violence, which reached a peak Sunday night through to the early hours of Monday morning when police used watercannon and pepper spray as demonstrators surrounded government offices, the three released a statement that said, “To surrender is not to fail, it is a silent denunciation of a heartless government.”
Although the trio have taken credit as the spiritual leaders of the movement which has been occupying public spaces for the last two months, in recent weeks they have taken a step back to allow younger student leaders to front the demonstrations, some of whom have not accepted the surrender.
Joshua Wong, leader from the student activist group Scholarism, and two other members of the student activist group, have begun a hunger strike, hoping to force dialogue with Hong Kong authorities.
However, although the movement has presented itself as a home-grown, pro-democracy protest, geared towards allowing Hong Kong residents to elect their own candidates to government, in October an investigation by whistle-blowing website Wikileaks revealed that the United States had funded groups linked to the Occupy Central protests.
The website announced that key figures behind the demonstrations were linked to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a U.S. foundation “dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world,” according to its website, but which has been linked with coup attempts and "regime change" plans in Venezuela and elsewhere.