HONG KONG - At least one protester was detained and an HSBC guard was hospitalized on Tuesday as bailiffs and police over six hours evicted Occupy Hong Kong demonstrators from the street-level plaza underneath the Asia headquarters of HSBC, where they had camped for nearly a year.
By about 4:15, bailiffs had whittled down the encampment to nine people on two sofas, all encircled by more than two dozen bailiffs with linked hands. By 4:30, all that remained was a single cream-colored couch, some black cushions and three protesters.
And about 10 minutes later, all that remained were some cleaners sweeping up debris from the site.
As officers dismantled the last of the demonstration, a protester with a megaphone vowed, ‘‘We'll die before we leave!''
The protesters also yelled taunts at the bailiffs. Referring to HSBC management in the building above, they cried, ‘‘You're being used by the men upstairs.''
The last demonstrators linked arms and sang the Communist Internationale in Chinese. They mostly refused interviews, maintaining silence when asked about their objectives.
A bailiff first approached the demonstrators at 11 a.m. and gave what he said was the second of three warnings for them to leave. Hong Kong laws require bailiffs to give three warnings before removing people or possessions pursuant to a court order.
He gave the third warning several minutes later, but the demonstrators remained seated.
The police took action 36 hours after the polls closed in the Hong Kong legislative elections; the local government had been wary of clearing the plaza during the election campaign.
Questions of , an important issue for the Occupy movement, had been important during the campaign, although the dominant issue was a local government plan to introduce patriotic education in the schools. That initiative drew tens of thousands of protesters into the streets and the government ended up retreating on Saturday evening from a mandatory deadline of 2015 for the plan.
One young man who argued vigorously with bailiffs was encircled by police officers at 10:45 a.m. and pulled away around a corner. He walked slowly in a circle of police officers, who were holding his wrists but did not immediately handcuff him.
About a half hour later, bailiffs carried away another screaming protester, as the remaining demonstrators beat a rapid tempo on four drums and remained seated. A third demonstrator, a woman, was pulled away by bailiffs at 11:20. She was taken to the edge of a nearby road, where the other two demonstrators were being watched by police, who formed a line to prevent the them from reentering the plaza but did not try to further restrain them.
In Hong Kong, bailiffs are court officers who serve legal documents and enforce court decisions.
About a dozen protesters shouted angrily at police.
“It's illegal to detain him,†one of them yelled.
The remaining protesters then retreated to the middle of their tents, sat down and began talking quietly among themselves as police watched.
The bailiffs paused and consulted among themselves at 11:30 when one of the remaining demonstrators used a portable megaphone to argue that the bailiffs had violated a local regulation, often followed in the eviction of apartment tenants who do not pay rent, that a visible notice of eviction must be posted in advance.
But a few minutes later, the bailiffs began carrying away a large chair and blankets from the sit-in, drawing outraged cries from the demonstrators.
By 11:45, bailiffs were leaving the remaining demonstrators in a seated group while they took a formal inventory of the tents, chairs and other possessions, then turned them over to workers in blue T-shirts, who carried them away.
A few homeless and mentally ill people have joined the protesters in recent months, but they were not in evidence on Tuesday. The dozen or so demonstrators - more than the half-dozen who appeared to have been living at the site during the summer - are all young men and women and spoke to each other in Cantonese, the local dialect.
