Thousands of pro-democracy protesters gathered on streets to urge the government for more civil liberties in Hong Kong. It was expected to be a huge traditional New Year’s Day march to welcome 2020, which was turned out to be one of the largest marches in the recent weeks to create pressure on the government to accept protesters demands.
Hours after police fired teargas to take control of the situation and had arrested hundreds of protestors, still protestors were marching in the streets and chanting slogans against the police and government. The huge turnout was a reminder to China’s leader, Xi Jinping that the months-long campaign against his authoritarian policies still had broad support in Hong Kong despite a weakening economy and increasingly violent clashes between the protesters and police.
After the glorious victory of pro-democracy advocates in recent elections the Tensions in Hong Kong eased out a little bit, but people want the full demands to be accepted by the government granting them the rights that they are seeking. This victory gave some rays of hope for semi-autonomous Hong Kong to go towards a more democratic form of government and more transparency in government and their policies.
As many as more 800,000 people attended the march, according to a Civil Human Rights Front, an advocacy group that organised the gathering.
The protestors were in a relaxed mood with people taking selfies and only calmly protesting with placards and slogans. Children were seen marching with their parents, holding their parent’s hands as they shouted, “Stand with Hong Kong!”, some areas were overcrowded and packed with the so many people that the crowds moved at extreme slow pace and spilled into adjacent alleys. Some small businesses encouraged the turnout by promising giveaways if more than 1 million people joined the march and also offered sponsorships to the organizers and offered water and foods to the protestors in their fight to gain full democracy from the dictatorship regime and communists rulers of China.
The protesters said they intended to remain peaceful, but some also expressed their intentions to use more aggressive tactics if police cracked down. In the evening, police readied canisters of tear gas as they stood opposite crowds of protesters who had barricaded a street in the downtown area in a briefly tense moment.
The protests began in June in response to a now-withdrawn bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland of China from Hong Kong, where courts are controlled by the Communist Party, and have evolved into a broader pro-democracy movement. The protest movement is supported by 59 percent of city residents polled in a survey conducted for Reuters by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute. More than a third of respondents said that they had attended an anti-government demonstration.
Due to police tactics against protestors, some people are now turning towards more violent and are adopting the ways to fight back to the police techniques and demonstrations, leading to mayhem and chaos. In these all the months since the demonstrations began, the unpopular bill, which would have been allowed extraditions to mainland of China, has been withdrawn, but the protesters’ demands have expanded to include increased democracy and democratic rights including during an investigation of the police.
The world is witnessing a movement that supports the idea of democracy, but the question arose that whether or not the already democratic governments, worldwide are fully democratic or just are known as democratic towards its people, but are not abiding with the rights of the general public. There are so many taboos including in USA, India and Canada where these countries are calling themselves world’s biggest offered democracy and the government of the general public and elected by the people. Will this movement lead to change and act as a suppressor of the autocratic form of government persisting in China and in rest of the world ?
