AKIPRESS.COM - The Hong Kong government moved to clear pro-democracy protesters from a small area in front of an office building on Tuesday morning in the first move against the demonstrators in weeks, reports The Guardian.

The authorities met no resistance, with student protesters saying they would not oppose the court order.

Dozens of bailiffs wearing black vests, backed by the police, supervised the removal of barricades in a small section of the main protest area around the Citic Tower after reading aloud a court injunction.

The operation’s timing was no surprise; it was announced ahead of time. Demonstrators had largely vacated the area, and the police, unlike in past operations against the movement, did not wear riot gear.

“The majority of us don’t want to violate what they claim to be the law,” said one protester, Chris Wong, a student from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Yet even without court injunctions, he said, the time had come for the movement to consider its next phase.

The court-mandated operation, applying to only a limited area, was unlike previous police efforts to clear broader areas. Those efforts, most recently a month ago, backfired, infuriating demonstrators and drawing thousands more people out on to the streets.

Demonstrators have blocked streets around Hong Kong’s main government buildings since Sept. 28, when the police tried to quell student-led protests with tear gas and pepper spray.

Tuesday’s clearance, still underway late in the morning, covered only a small sliver of the occupied area, but was the first attempt in weeks to shrink the barricaded camps that protesters had built in an effort to force the local authorities and Chinese Communist Party leaders in Beijing to heed their demands for free elections for Hong Kong’s top leader, the chief executive.