Three nights of tear gas-free protests as Hong Kong’s anti-government movement gives peace a chance
- Organiser estimates 1.7 million at Sunday’s Victoria Park rally, though police estimate is much smaller
- Government and police do not condemn the protest, although they note the disruption caused by hundreds of thousands taking over Hong Kong Island streets
Hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters braved torrential rains on Sunday as they marched along the main thoroughfares of Hong Kong Island, determined to show the movement could regain its peaceful moorings despite the recent escalation of violence.
By night’s end, the city had wrapped up its eleventh consecutive weekend of protests, without any tear gas being fired. Groups of protesters, however, dipped into their standard toolkit to hurl insults and hard objects at police and shine laser beams at the force’s headquarters in Wan Chai.
Nonetheless, Hong Kong recorded three straight days of demonstrations that ended with no physical clashes between protesters and police, in a break from the troubling pattern of the past few weeks, which had prompted condemnation from the central and local governments.
Organisers from the Civil Human Rights Front estimated 1.7 million people were at the core of the march, as volunteers counted the numbers just in the areas closest to the starting rally in Victoria Park, between Causeway Bay and Fortress Hill.
“There were large numbers of people from Causeway Bay to Central that we were unable to take into account, so I believe the actual turnout is much larger than 1.7 million,” the Front’s convenor, Jimmy Sham Tsz-kit, said. Police put the estimate at 128,000 as the rally peaked.
By 1.30pm, even though the gathering was supposed to start at 3pm, it became clear that another sea of black was about to flood the streets as wave upon wave of protesters tried to converge on the park, only to be pushed very quickly onto neighbouring roads.