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Amanpour
Hong Kong Occupy Central Founders Surrender; Israeli Government in Crisis; Eradicating Modern-Day Slavery; Imagine a World
Aired December 03, 2014 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight: the bumpy road to democracy in Hong Kong as protest leaders surrender but supporters vow
not to give up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EMILY LAU, DEMOCRATIC PARTY (HONG KONG): We will fight them in the street and we will fight them through the ballot box. And this battle will
go on and on. And we're not going to stop.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR (voice-over): And snap elections in Israel, where a challenge to democracy has caused the government to collapse.
Also, one day after hosting the historic anti-slavery campaign, we hear why Pope Francis is among the wolves.
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AMANPOUR: Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.
A symbolic surrender, the founders of Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement briefly turned themselves in to police and urged the rest to stand
down, too. They say they're not abandoning the cause, but they are staying the course for democratic change.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BENNY TAI, OCCUPY CENTRAL CO-FOUNDER: The fight for democracy is a long battle. We should reserve all our energy in order to situate a better
chance (ph) that we could get democracy for Hong Kong in the long run.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: But other factions like the student protesters say they are staying out and this week three of them went on hunger strike. But
authorities still refuse to budge.
So what next? On Monday, Hong Kong legislator and chair of the Democratic Party, Emily Lau, told me that protesters had to leave the
streets in order to keep the public on their side. Tonight I ask her what's next for the movement.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Emily Lau, welcome back to the program.
LAU: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: So on Monday, you told me you felt that the street protests had to change but you still back the democracy movement.
What has been accomplished by Benny Tai and the Occupy Central movement surrendering and getting off the streets?
LAU: Well, I guess this is the beginning of the end of this phase. They are very important people and when they decided to walk into the
police station to surrender, they are sending out a signal to Hong Kong, particularly to the protesters, that maybe it's time to call this part of
the movement to a close.
AMANPOUR: Well, let me then ask you, because Benny Tai and his group have made this statement, so to speak. But the others, the students are
saying no way, no day. We stay on the streets and as you know one of the most prominent, Joshua Wong, is on a hunger strike.
LAU: Well, they are saying that now and I don't know how much he can carry on with the hunger strike because he's feeling a bit weak and frail
and he said once the doctors said it is a bit dicey, he would stop.
And I think the students should recognize that if we push ahead with this, particularly with any escalation which may lead to violence, it would
turn the community against us.
So I think we have to push the administration of CY Leung and Beijing to engage in a dialogue with us. That is the only way out. And we need to
get the people behind us so we have to do it in a peaceful and non-violent way.
AMANPOUR: Well, Emily, this is the heart of the matter, isn't it, because on Monday you were telling me we want Beijing to respond to us.
Talk to us. But clearly their strategy has been to consciously ignore you all -- not you, but the protesters -- and hope that this goes away.
Now the street protests may go away.
Has Beijing won or what?
LAU: Well, the protesters may go and they have to go away because they can't stay in the street all the time. But we are not going to go
away. Like a bad penny, I'll keep turning up. Many of us will keep turning up.
So there is no way Beijing can just shut us out. So but still we have to be pragmatic. As Benny Tai said, this is maybe the end of one phase.
But now there's so many people, particularly the young people, they have woken up to the pro-democracy movement.
They are going to go forward with all of us and that is a big achievement. So we have to tell the young people and all the protesters to
think very carefully what is the next stage, how do we regroup and to bring this movement forward. It is a very critical time for us.
AMANPOUR: So have you thought about the next stage then?
What is the obvious next stage to this?
LAU: Well, of course, we have to take the message to all of Hong Kong. There will be elections coming up in less than a year's time. In
November next year, we have district councils elections. They are very local elections. But they're elections all the same. And there will be
more than 400 seats up for grabs.
And there are many things to do. If the students want to field candidates, they are more than welcome. So it is not that we spend our
whole life on the street. We have to go into the whole political process and try to engage the people and force the government to talk to us.
AMANPOUR: Can I ask you what you make of the analysis by Minxin Pei who, as you know, is a professor in California, and has written in the
"Financial Times" that Beijing seemed to have been sort of winning by not responding but, by not responding, has attracted more radical groups into
the protesters, which may actually cause it to have to respond.
What do you make of that?
LAU: Well, there are more radical groups in amongst the protesters and some of them actually, I think, may be supported by Beijing. So
actually the political scene here is very complex and I don't know whether if we have more radical elements that would make it harder for Beijing to
respond.
But I think the fact of the matter is Beijing is very intransigent; it seems -- it feels very confident and -- but we in Hong Kong, tiny, little
Hong Kong, we have friends all over the world. And we will continue to speak, to struggle in a peaceful and non-violent way.
AMANPOUR: So --
(CROSSTALK)
LAU: And we will push -- we will push Beijing to talk to us.
AMANPOUR: -- you're a politician; you're also impassioned about this.
How do you try to politically convince Beijing to accept what you're asking for?
LAU: Politics is about strength and power. If you can show everybody that you have the support of the community and you fight elections and you
win many seats, Beijing will have to listen to us.
So that is the political way forward, too. So I tell the students, OK, you're so keen, you think you are so good, OK. Form your parties;
fight the elections. So we will fight them in the street and we will fight them through the ballot box. And this battle will go on and on. And we're
not going to stop.
AMANPOUR: Emily Lau, thank you so much for joining me again.
LAU: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Fighting words indeed. And in Israel, the government is beleaguered for different reasons. And early elections have just been
called for next March after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last night sacked two cabinet ministers for challenging government policy, including
the proposed Jewish State law, which critics say chips away at the very heart of Israel's democracy.
One of the ministers just ousted was Israel's peace negotiator and now joining me from Washington is Martin Indyk, who was America's lead peace
negotiator before he stepped down after those latest talks failed. He is now vice president again for foreign policy at The Brookings Institution.
Martin Indyk, welcome to the program. Thank you for joining me.
MARTIN INDYK, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Great to be with you, Christiane.
AMANPOUR: With this government collapse and new elections, who wins; who loses?
What is happening inside in Israel right now?
INDYK: Well, it's a little premature to say who wins and loses, of course, because that'll be decided by the voters definitively in March,
mid-March when the elections will take place.
I think that there's -- does seem to be a feeling in Israel that a government that was supposed to last for four years now coming down at the
end of its second year, that the people have been somewhat shortchanged and not exactly welcoming the idea that they have to go back to elections,
again.
On the other hand, there is also a sense that this government wasn't able to function effectively, combined with right-wing parties and the
center parties in this coalition were coming apart. They started to come apart over the peace negotiations last year.
But since then, with the war in Gaza and then the increased conflict in Jerusalem, there's been divergent responses to all of this, which has
just created this, I think collapse is the best word for it, in the ability of the government to function.
AMANPOUR: Martin?
INDYK: So the Israelis overall lose by that.
AMANPOUR: And the two who've lost in terms of being ousted or fired have been center party leaders. And therefore some are saying that
inevitably the political sort of winds are drifting rightwards.
You are about to co-host this weekend at the Saban Forum the annual U.S.-Israeli Relations Forum there. And there will the foreign minister,
Avigdor Lieberman, who on the peace process thinks that it's best just to bypass the Palestinians and negotiate directly with the Arab League.
There's Naftali Bennett, who is creeping up on Likud's popularity, again, further right than Benjamin Netanyahu. He's talked openly about
annexing part of the West Bank.
Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid, who had more centrist views on all of this, have gone for the moment.
Where now the peace process?
Do you see it at all be able to be restarted in any way that you had envisioned in the framework?
INDYK: Well, it's clear that if you look at the polls now, the Right is enjoying a surge. In particular, as you mentioned, Naftali Bennett
leading the Jewish Home Party has in the polls risen by some five seats to what he has at the moment.
And this indicates a shift to the right, which really started over the summer, I think, as a result of the Gaza War. Now there are divergent
positions as you said within the Right. Naftali Bennett is adamantly opposed to a two-state solution. And I presume will run in card (ph) on
that platform.
Avig Lieberman, also a right-wing -- has a right-wing party, is strongly supporting a two-state solution because he wants to separate from
the Arabs and Palestinians even of Jerusalem. And he has now come out openly and embraced the Arab peace initiative, which includes a call for
Israel to return to the '67 borders with mutually agreed swaps.
So you've got some interesting divergence there. I would say that Lieberman is the man to watch, because even though he's on the right, he
has a divergent view when it comes to a two-state solution.
And he could join with the center parties and form a kind of center right coalition that would be quite different to the right-wing religious
coalition that Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to have in mind for his next coalition, if he gets the chance to form it.
AMANPOUR: A lot of people are predicting that he probably will. Of course, we'll wait to see what happens in March at the elections. But a
lot of detail has been written about these latest peace negotiations. And you were quoted -- or at least paraphrased as saying that, look, this time,
America did and Secretary of State John Kerry did just about anything anybody reasonably could do to get a agreement signed between the two
parties.
And yet it didn't happen.
Do you think it's just because with Prime Minister Netanyahu, it's not going to happen? With Mahmoud Abbas, it's not going to happen? Or is it
because the current American leadership is not strong enough on this?
What is the reason why this isn't happening?
INDYK: Well, as you pointed out, I made the argument that there was no lack of leadership on the part of the United States, that Secretary
Kerry, backed by President Obama, made every effort to try to move the parties towards a resolution. But American will and ingenuity, creativity,
on its own is not enough. Clearly it wasn't enough in this case. And the two parties have to be committed to it.
And I think both leaders, Abu Mazen, President Mahmoud Abbas on the Palestinian side, and Prime Minister Netanyahu were both looking over their
shoulders at the more extreme parts of their polity in the Palestinian case and of course Hamas, which is absolutely opposed to a two-state solution,
and on the Israeli side within Prime Minister Netanyahu's own coalition, you had groups adamantly, also adamantly opposed to a two-state solution.
And so I think in those circumstances, it takes very strong-willed leaders to be able to push through a kind of opposition they were facing
and, frankly, a public on both sides that didn't believe in the possibility of a two-state solution anymore because they didn't believe that the other
side actually wanted it.
So a kind of distrust permeated the negotiations that was in the end impossible for us to overcome.
AMANPOUR: A sorry state of affairs indeed. And you will probably have an incredibly interesting forum this weekend, given these latest
political upheavals inside Israel.
Martin Indyk, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
And now a note on India: protests have marked the 30th anniversary of the world's worst industrial disaster: the deadly poison gas leak at Union
Carbide in Bhopal that killed 4,000 people. Many more succumbed in later months and devastating effects continue. Many of those exposed have had
physically and mentally disabled children.
Coming up, one day after the pope calls for an end to forced labor and modern-day slavery, why my next guest says Francis is among the wolves.
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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.
Now yesterday we were in Rome, reporting on the historic gathering of the world's major religious leaders to help eradicate modern-day slavery by
2020. Pope Francis hosted this ambitious campaign. And before I left Rome, I met up with veteran Vatican insider and author, Marco Politi.
The title of his latest book, "Francis among the Wolves," sums up the pope's difficult road to reforming the Roman Catholic Church.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Marco Politi, welcome. Always good to talk to you with the Vatican as our backdrop.
What do you make of this historic anti-slavery summit by the pope?
Is it going to work?
MARCO POLITI, AUTHOR: It's the great concern of Pope Francis because he's convinced that the slavery issue doesn't refer only to the third world
countries, but it's a hot issue also in the West and developed countries.
And his aim is human traffic to be declared a crime against humanity by the United Nations.
AMANPOUR: And that is really raising the bar. So him saying crime against humanity is actually very conscious, legal language.
POLITI: Absolutely.
AMANPOUR: He had all the world's religious leaders, all the important leaders from every faith was here. He can get them on board.
What about his own clergy? What about the Catholic hierarchy right now? Nearly two years into the pope's papacy, has he implemented the
reforms? Do people know which way he's going? What's the status report now?
POLITI: It's a very tough period he's beginning for him because of course people is enthusiastic about him. I mean the believers but also
non-believers are very interested in what he's saying. But within the church there is a tough group of conservative bishops and priests and
cardinals and also very traditionalist bishops and cardinals who are practically against the pope, who are working against the pope.
They don't like what he wanted to do with this synod about family to give new possibilities to remarried and divorced people, to get the
communion or to have a new look on the homosexual unions.
AMANPOUR: So what do you anticipate he'll do? Your new book is called, "Francis and the Wolves."
What do you mean by that?
POLITI: St. Francis of Assisi once met a wolf. He preached to him and he domesticated the wolf. But what we are seeing after 1.5 years is
that the wolves in the Vatican or in the bishops' conference is actually are becoming more and more aggressive.
(CROSSTALK)
POLITI: -- for instance has said --
AMANPOUR: The American cardinal?
POLITI: -- the American cardinal, Burke, which has been fired by the pope recently, has said that the ship of the church, many feel, is without
--
AMANPOUR: A rudder.
POLITI: -- without rudder.
And this is a very tough expression.
AMANPOUR: It is actually.
POLITI: And also there is an attempt to delegitimize him, just in the eve of the synod, there was a book here in Italy from a right-wing Catholic
who said that his election was illegal.
AMANPOUR: And that comes from politics that we see in presidential elections all around the world. And now they're bringing that into the
church. But the pope has disciplined those who you say have been aggressive against him. He's disciplined Burke, for instance.
POLITI: Yes, but he had already decided to remove Burke before this synod. The pope is making -- of course he's reshuffling a little bit in
the curia, but he does it very slowly and he's very gentle in this sense.
His idea is that it is good that people speaks out. So when somebody comes to him and says, but this cardinal is critic against you, he say it's
good. Whenever they speak out, even if they are critic, this brings debate. The aim of the pope is to give again to the church, the atmosphere
of Vatican council, too, where everybody could take part in the decision- making process.
AMANPOUR: And yet, of course, most of the bishops today were appointed and raised up by his two very conservative predecessors. The
pope just nominated an archbishop of Chicago who's considered more liberal, more in the pope's compassionate rather than judgmental vein.
Which way is it going to go for the pope? Or is it still an open question?
POLITI: Well, just the way he choose the new archbishop of Chicago is very typical of him. He did the same here in Italy with the secretary of
the bishops' conference. He took a priest from a very little diocese in South Italy, who doesn't live in the residence of the archbishop, but lives
in a seminary and who cares a lot about --
(CROSSTALK)
POLITI: -- the simple life. But of course you can't change thousands of bishops overnight. So it's a very slow process. And we don't know
whether he will succeed in the next synod in October 2015 to have a true, strong majority in order to push through the idea of giving after a period
of penance the Eucharist to the divorce and married and to have a new look to the common life of homosexual couples.
So it is still a very open game. And it is played -- it is played now like in the political life. For instance, in the last weeks, there were
rumors completely without any reason, but there were rumors that he would resign quickly. This is a typical political atmosphere like in "House of
Cards."
AMANPOUR: On that note, Marco Politi, always fascinating. Thanks for joining me.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: So a tense political atmosphere in the Vatican then.
But compassion and commemoration there today from the Vatican's Cricket Club, which held mass for a fellow player taken before his time.
Next, imagine a world without a sportsman and a gentleman as cricketer Phillip Hughes is laid to rest.
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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, cricket, the gentleman's game that's watched by more than a billion fans around the world, publicly pours out
its heart and says goodbye to one of its greats. Imagine a world without this gentlemanly sportsman, Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes, who, at
25, was taken way before his time by a ball that struck him in the base of the neck.
And today the world of cricket grieved; indeed, it seemed the whole world grieved along with the friends and family who buried him. Shops were
closed in Hughes' hometown of Macksville so the staff there could make up the honor guard for the funeral procession of their local hero.
When he died last week, it was a cricket fan, an I.T. worker, who put out his bat and launched a humble, poignant and viral tribute, which spread
across social media from Bangladesh to Broadway, where Australian actor Hugh Jackman put out his bat on stage.
But it was his Australian captain and friend, Michael Clarke, who gave perhaps the most touching farewell to Phillip Hughes, who left the game he
loved 63, not out.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL CLARKE, CAPTAIN, AUSTRALIA CRICKET TEAM: We must dig in and get through to tea and we must play on. So rest in peace, my little
brother. I'll see you out in the middle.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: An inspiration to so many.
And that is it for our program tonight. Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.
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