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Hu urges unity and tolerance amid protests

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President Hu Jintao issued a clarion call for unity as he met Hong Kong's business and political elite behind a tight ring of security - but outside, hundreds of protesters demanded democracy and transparency over the death of dissident Li Wangyang. They clashed with police, who responded with pepper spray.

On the second day of his visit to the city to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the handover, Hu told a gathering of tycoons and political leaders that Hong Kong society needed more 'co-operation, consultation and tolerance'.

Those qualities were in short supply outside the Convention and Exhibition Centre, where the president was speaking. The anger of protesters was stoked by the earlier forced removal of a journalist from a designated press area by plain-clothes police after he shouted a question about the Tiananmen Square crackdown to Hu during the leader's visit to the new Kai Tak cruise terminal.

The removal of Apple Daily reporter Rex Hon Yiu-ting prompted an angry response from journalists' groups, academics and pan-democrat politicians, who described it as an attack on press freedom. It also led police to issue a statement of 'regret' about the incident, which a force spokesman said would be investigated. The newspaper's chief editor, Cheung Kim-hung, condemned the police action and said the newspaper was considering legal action.

It is not clear whether Hu heard the reporter ask if the president had heard Hong Kong people's calls for the truth about the June 4 crackdown, but Hon - who was held in a stairwell for about 15 minutes before being released once Hu had left the area - later said: 'The police said I had caused a disturbance by asking the question too loudly.'

Mak Yin-ting, chairwoman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, said: 'Journalists should be allowed to ask whatever questions they want to ask, regardless of the content and the volume.'

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