Anti-communist crowds marched through Hong Kong’s downtown areas Sunday to decry the government’s emergency powers and press their demands for political freedom. Many wore masks in open defiance of a government ban on facial coverings meant as a deterrent to protesters, whose four-month-old democratic rebellion has thrown the semi-autonomous enclave into crisis and caused consternation among China’s top leadership.
Protesters braved rain and thundery skies to assemble from lunchtime in the retail and entertainment district of Causeway Bay, chanting “Hongkongers resist!” as they set off in the direction of the city center and the main government offices. According to a police statement, barricades were quickly erected and major thoroughfares occupied.
Live news streams also showed angry crowds gathering in the tourist district on the Kowloon peninsula, chanting “Fight for freedom! Stand with Hong Kong!” and singing “Glory to Hong Kong”—the song that many are calling Hong Kong’s “national anthem”—as they processed up the tourist strip of Nathan Road.
“The government is doing everything it can to restrict our freedom of assembly because it wants to end the protests,” said a protester named Eva, 50.
“I don’t think it will end unless the army marches in,” she told TIME.
Marching alongside, her husband said that while he did not agree with violence “The youngsters feel they have no choice … the government made them.”
The latest demonstrations come in the wake of the most violent unrest Hong Kong has seen in over 50 years. Protesters rampaged across the city on both Oct. 1—China’s national day—and again on Oct. 4, when the government invoked the colonial-era Emergency Regulations Ordinance to ban the wearing of masks at public gatherings.
Protesters clashed with police and smashed the shopfronts of retailers with mainland Chinese connections. Two teenage boys were shot by police in separate incidents, an Indonesian journalist was blinded in one eye after being hit by a police projectile, and an undercover police officer narrowly escaped with his life after a mob momentarily set him alight with a petrol bomb. Scores of others were injured and hundreds of arrests were made.
The city’s train network came in for particularly savage assault, with protesters ransacking stations, starting fires, and attacking trains. Extensive damage meant that the entire system was suspended yesterday and only partial services resumed today.
Hong Kong appeared shell-shocked for much of Saturday, with banks, shops, malls, and government facilities shut, runs reported on ATMs, and panic buying breaking out at the few supermarkets that remained open. Protests resumed in the evening at multiple locations.
Meanwhile, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, said Saturday that the extent of violence during Hong Kong’s four months of anti-government unrest warranted an independent probe. She called on Hong Kong authorities to launch an “effective, prompt, independent and impartial investigation” into the handling of the protests, which to date have led to more than 1,100 injuries.
Hong Kong’s political crisis was sparked by a now withdrawn extradition bill, which would have allowed the rendition of fugitives to mainland China for the first time. Opposition to the bill quickly grew into a repudiation of both the unrepresentative local government and of Beijing, which has labeled the movement a color rebellion. Many protesters are calling for self-determination or independence for the former British possession, which was retroceded to China in 1997 after 156 years of colonial rule.
—With reporting by Laignee Barron and Aria Chen / Hong Kong
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