Hong Kong protesters set to rally near China station

GBnews24 desk//

Anti-government protesters in Hong Kong plan to rally later on Sunday outside a controversial station where high-speed trains depart for the Chinese mainland as they try to turn up pressure on the city’s pro-Beijing leaders.

The rally is the first major protest planned since last Monday’s unprecedented storming of parliament by largely young, masked protesters – a move which plunged the international financial hub further into crisis.

Hong Kong has been rocked by a month of huge peaceful protests as well as a series of separate violent confrontations with police, sparked by a law that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China.

The bill has since been postponed in response to the huge backlash but that has done little to quell public anger which has evolved into a wider movement calling for democratic reforms and a halt to sliding freedoms in the semi-autonomous city.

Protesters are demanding the bill be scrapped entirely, an independent inquiry into police use of tear gas and rubber bullets, an amnesty for those arrested and for the city’s unelected leader Carrie Lam to step down