Fresh pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong

Several thousand people took to the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday to call for "true universal suffrage" at leadership elections in 2017, with organizers saying there would be no repeat of last year's protest actions, in which key roads were shut down in the city center for two-and-a-half months.

Some 2,000 police were deployed to prevent a repeat of the sit-ins last year.

Many of the protesters on Sunday carried yellow umbrellas, which became a symbol of last year's campaign after being used by demonstrators to protect themselves from pepper spray used by police to disperse the crowds.

Others were armed with protective shields, fearing violence from anti-democracy groups later in the evening.

"We do not accept the pseudo democracy proposed by the government," Daisy Chan, of the Civil Human Rights Front, told DW. "What the government should face is that, if they neglect one more time after this demonstration, they will face greater pressure afterwards."

No concession from Beijing

The protest come as tensions in the former British colony remain high, with Chinese authorities consistently rejecting activists' demands for a free selection of candidates at the 2017 elections.

The Chinese government announced late in August that candidates for the elections would first be vetted by a pro-Beijing committee, sparking protests, known as the Occupy Central movement, that drew up to 100,000 people at their height and led to the establishment of several sit-in sites in various parts of the city.

Officials cleared the last of the protest camps in December.

Protesters have dismissed the talks the government has offered. "The pan-democrats, the student organizations, and different parties …they’re all boycotting the so-called consultation," Alex Chow, secretary-general of the Hong Kong Federation of Students told DW, "because we all view it as a false consultation. It’s not really proposing an authentic democratic reform, but rather, it is simply a lie to sustain the authority of the vested interest."

Martin Lee Chu-Ming, a lawyer and former chairman of the Democratic Party, was equally unimpressed. "This so-called second round of consultation excercise is basically flawed," he told DW. "Whoever will actually become a candidate in the next round of the Chief Executive election in 2017 must be people who have been approved by Beijing first.... Any meaningful consultation must be conducted without condition."

Hong Kong was returned to China by Great Britain in 1997 under a so-called "one country, two systems" agreement that envisaged a high degree of autonomy for the global financial hub.

Pro-democracy activists accuse Beijing of gradually eroding the city's wide-ranging freedoms and of reneging on a promise to allow Hong Kongers to freely elect their chief executive.

tj/sb (Reuters, AFP)