HONG KONG — A confrontation in Hong Kong
between pro-democracy protesters and the police
continued into a second day on Saturday, as dozens
of students were arrested after occupying the
forecourt of the local government’s headquarters.
Thousands of supporters remained in the area, and
some said the confrontation was a forerunner of
bigger protests expected next week.

“We came to support the students, who merely
wanted a dialogue about our demands,” Iris Cheung,
a university student who had joined the crowd, said
Saturday. “But you can see that the government
doesn’t want dialogue,” she said.
“Now Occupy Central will be bigger, because people
will be angrier,” Ms. Cheung said. She was referring
to Occupy Central with Love and Peace, the city’s
main pro-democracy movement, which is expected
to hold a sit-in next week in Central, Hong Kong’s
financial heart.

The demonstrators are protesting China’s plan for
changing how Hong Kong elects its top leader, the
chief executive, starting in 2017. The current chief
executive, Leung Chun-ying, has backed the plan,
which for the first time would let the public vote for
the top leader; Mr. Leung and his predecessors were
selected by a committee dominated by Beijing
loyalists.

But critics say that vote would be meaningless,
because the plan includes procedural hurdles that
would screen out candidates who do not have
Beijing’s implicit blessing.

The latest protests erupted on Friday night, at the
end of a week-long boycott of classes by university
students to protest China’s election plan. The
students, many of whom had gathered near the
government headquarters, were joined on Friday by
hundreds of high school students, and that night
the peaceful rally gave way to a night of torrid
protest.

A group of 200 or so students evaded the police and
stormed into the forecourt near the entrance of the
government headquarters, known to the
demonstrators as Civic Square, which had recently
been blocked off from the public. A ring of police
surrounded the protesters inside the forecourt, but
hundreds and eventually thousands of protesters gathered outside the fence, most of them
apparently in support of the students.

“We didn’t come for violence,” said Paul Leung, a
recent university graduate who came to support the
students and stayed for much of the night. “The
Civic Square belongs to the people, not the
government. We have the right to be there, to
demand that the government dialogue. But instead,
they sprayed us, treated the students like criminals,
not like citizens.”

By Saturday afternoon, dozens of additional police
officers with shields and helmets had moved into
the forecourt, and the remaining students were told
they had five minutes to leave before force would be
used. Amid jeers from protesters on the other side
of the fence, the police one by one prised away the
protesters, who had joined arms. Sixty-one people
were arrested, the police said.

In a society with a tradition of reverence for
education, the students have drawn an outpouring
of support from classmates and other residents,
some of whom sent piles of bottled water, tissues
and snacks to the demonstrators on Saturday. Some
residents saw echoes of Beijing in 1989, when there
was a surge of public support for students who
occupied Tiananmen Square, before the protests
were brutally suppressed.

“They are ready to pick up the democracy baton
from the student movement in China in 1989,” said
Sonny Lau, 57, who came to support the students
early on Saturday morning, when he said he was
pepper-sprayed by the police. “Part of our success
would be to put pressure on the Communist Party
by getting the world’s attention.”

Since Hong Kong was returned to Chinese
sovereignty in 1997, the former British colony has
kept its own independent courts and legal
protections for free speech and assembly, as well as
a robust civil society. But many democratic groups
and politicians say the city’s freedoms are eroding
under mainland China’s growing political and
economic influence.

Occupy Central is expected to announce soon that it
will hold sit-in protests in Central starting on
Wednesday, China’s National Day, which is also a
public holiday in Hong Kong. Chan Kin-man, a co-
founder of Occupy Central, has indicated that the
announcement will be made Sunday.

The Hong Kong Federation of Students said
Saturday that the protest would go on at least into
the night. The Hong Kong government’s secretary
for security, Lai Tung-kwok, warned people to stay
away from the area.
“Right now, there are still a considerably large
number of people gathering there,” he said. “I appeal to them that they leave as soon as possible,
and to other people not to go to the government
headquarters or join in associated activities.”

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