Protesters Attempt to Break Into the Hong Kong Legislature HONG KONG - Demonstrators attempted to break into Hong Kong's legislature late Tuesday night and early Wednesday by smashing windows. Police officers in riot gear used pepper spray to help quell the protest and arrested four men. Witnesses said the attempted break-in was in retaliation for court-ordered clearances of some parts of the protest area that began on Tuesday. But the main student groups leading the sit-in demonstrations that have surrounded the Legislative Council complex for more than 50 days moved quickly to distance themselves from the vandalism. Behind a police cordon at the legislature's building were two smashed windows, one with a hole large enough for people to slip through. For weeks, the main protest area in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong has been largely peaceful, as a festive tent city gradually spread out over a wide thoroughfare and demonstrators filled their new occupied zone with art. The overnight clash marked a shift and involved at least some people from the more militant protest zone in the Mongkok neighborhood, across Victoria Harbor in Kowloon. They wore the characteristic hard hats and surgical masks of those protests. What Prompted the Hong Kong Protests? Hong Kong belongs to China and operates under a policy of "one country, two systems." On Wednesday morning, a group of helmeted demonstrators huddled together near the police lines outside the Legislative Council, watching news reports of their attempted break-in on their cellphones. One man, a 23-year-old employee at a Japanese noodle shop who called himself Kuroros, said the action was aimed at taking over the building, just as protesters in Taiwan occupied the legislature there earlier this year. "If we keep sitting here, doing nothing, nothing's going to change," he said. Kuroros, who said he helped smash the windows with concrete blocks and metal rods, declined to give his real name because he feared arrest. "This isn't about law, it's about politics," he said. Posts on HKGolden, an online message board, rallied people to take part in the break-in. One post used thinly disguised code words, calling the Legislative Council the "Garbage Council," for example. The words sound similar in Cantonese. The forum has been a popular place for more radical groups to organize rallies and is closely monitored by the police. "Those who champion peace, reason and nonviolence are the government's agents," one person wrote on the forum Wednesday morning. The mainstream student groups who have been the public face of Hong Kong's sit-in demonstrations said they were not involved in the episode and did not approve of it. "Nonviolence is our biggest weapon," Alex Chow, the secretary general of the Federation of Students, told reporters Wednesday morning. The sit-ins have occupied roads in three areas of the city since late September. They came in response to a decision by China's legislature to set strict guidelines for planned elections in Hong Kong for its highest post, the chief executive.