News Digest

Pro-democracy protesters return to Hong Kong streets

Thousands of pro-democracy protesters will rally on Hong Kong’s streets Sunday for the first time since mass demonstrations shut down parts of the city for more than two months. The afternoon march through central Hong Kong is expected to draw 50,000 people with police warning that attempts to reoccupy key roads cleared of a sea of tented protest camps in December “are likely”. No protest group has announced it intends to relaunch the occupation, however. The march is set to gauge the public’s appetite for the continued fight for free leadership elections, with authorities having made no concessions to activists’ demands and tensions still high in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.

The rally continues to call out to people to join the democracy movement.

Daisy Chan, organiser

Officials in December cleared the final protest camps, which brought roads to a standstill with rallies that drew around 100,000 at their peak and saw violent clashes with police. The demonstrations started in late September and lasted for more than two months, after years of disagreements over how the city’s leader should be chosen in the future. Chinese authorities have promised Hong Kongers the right to vote for their chief executive in 2017, but ruled that nominees will have to be vetted by a pro-Beijing committee, a proposal which has been heavily criticised by activists. Chan said the rally would show that the Occupy movement, as the protests were known, was a political awakening for the people of the former British colony.