Hundreds of thousands march for democracy in Hong Kong

Waving colonial-era flags and chanting anti-Beijing slogans, half a million protesters staged a pro-democracy marched in rain-soaked Hong Kong Tuesday, organisers said, claiming the largest turnout since the city was handed back to China. The scale of the rally reflects surging discontent over Beijing's insistence that it vet candidates before a vote in 2017 for the semi-autonomous city's next leader.
It comes after nearly 800,000 people took part in an informal referendum demanding that voters be allowed a say in the nomination of candidates. The poll irked Beijing, which branded it "illegal and invalid". The protest route from the city's Victoria Park to the skyscraper-packed Central business district was a sea of umbrellas and banners emblazoned with slogans such as "We want real democracy" and "We stand united against China".
Some protesters sang the Cantonese version of "Do You Hear the People Sing?" - the rabble-rousing anthem from the musical "Les Miserables". Despite torrential downpours, swarms of protesters continued pouring into the clogged streets through the afternoon and evening.
Johnson Yeung, a rally organiser, said at least 510,000 protesters had attended the march - believed to be a record for July 1 protests, an annual outpouring of discontent directed at both China's communist government and the local leadership. "This year people came out braving the rain and wind and many citizens joined along the way," Yeung told a cheering crowd in the city's Central business district late Tuesday. Yeung told AFP that the turnout marked a "record" since the handover.
Official estimates of the turnout were more conservative, with police saying 98,600 people took part during the "peak" of the rally, without elaborating. "There is a strong desire for genuine democracy that offers choice and competition without (political) vetting," Anson Chan, a former number two official in Hong Kong who is now a pro-democracy activist, told reporters. The chairman of the Hong Kong post office union, marching in the muggy heat, said the city's government was kow-towing to Beijing. "This march is not for us, it's for our children. Without universal suffrage there's no way to monitor the government," said Ip Kam-fu.