Pro-democracy protesters to return to Hong Kong streets

Pro-democracy legislators hold up yellow umbrellas and banners stating “I want real universal suffrage” and “Leung Chun-ying Step down” as they walk out of the Legislative Council during Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying’s annual policy address in Hong Kong, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2015. AP

HONG KONG, China – 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”.

However no protest group has announced it intends to relaunch the occupation.

It 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,” organiser Daisy Chan told AFP.

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 Kong people the right to vote for the chief executive in 2017, but ruled that nominees for the top spot 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 Hong Kong people.

“In the past years, these citizens were less political than they are right now. The Occupy movement woke people up.”

‘Tired of politics’

“This march demonstrates to the citizens that the pro-democracy momentum is not dead and that it will continue,” political analyst Sonny Lo told AFP.

But Lo also believes residents are exhausted from protests over political reform, pressuring pro-democracy activists to be more restrained going forward.

“At this moment the members of the public are tired of politics. The democrats have to strategise very carefully,” Lo, head of the social sciences department at the Hong Kong Institute of Education said, adding that most Hong Kong people were “politically pragmatic”.

Police have requested march organisers to provide 100 marshals, which the group has said is “unreasonable”.

Chan said they were not planning to re-occupy the streets on Sunday, but the police are nervous.

“It is believed that those supporting the illegal occupation are likely to seize the opportunity to reoccupy roads which have been now re-opened to traffic,” a statement said ahead of the march.

The original founders of the Occupy movement including Benny Tai, along with teenage activist Joshua Wong and other student leaders will attend the rally.

Hong Kong’s government is urging the public to support the Beijing-approved plan.

The proposed electoral reform package needs the approval of two-thirds of the city’s legislature in order to be passed. A vote is expected to take place in the summer.

Protests in Hong Kong pre-date Occupy, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets to protest over issues including an unpopular security bill or at the annual commemorations marking China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Last July, more than half a million people demonstrated a month before Beijing ruled on the city’s political reform.

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