Pro-democracy politicians defied a police ban to lead a march through downtown Hong Kong on Tuesday, China’s National Day, calling for greater political freedom.
Thousands of black-clad protesters began gathering in the early afternoon at the Causeway Bay retail and entertainment district. Chanting “Fight for freedom!”—and the democracy movement’s slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time!”—they set off for the city center. At the head of the march, politicians, including veteran campaigners Albert Ho and Lee Cheuk-yan, carried a banner that read “End dictatorship, return power to the people.”
National Day is a festive occasion in mainland China, but a source of tension and resentment in semi-autonomous Hong Kong, where most people, according to surveys, do not define themselves as Chinese but as “Hongkongers.”
Although the raising of the Chinese flag took place without incident at 8:00 a.m. local time, the public were not invited and VIPs attending the ceremony were asked, for security reasons, to gather at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center to watch the event on closed circuit television.
Much of the city has been on lockdown, with more than two dozen shopping malls closed, some 14 subway stations shuttered and thousands of police on the streets.
Early in the day, protesters unveiled a banner reading “Oct. 1 national day of mourning—liberate Hong Kong” from the summit of Lion Rock, a 495-meter hill overlooking the Kowloon peninsula that many in the former British colony regard as symbolic of the city.
Other protesters hung a banner reading “#NotMyNationalDay, Proud to be British since 1841” at the entrance of the British consulate.
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, professor of history at the University of California, Irvine and the author of the forthcoming book Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink, told TIME that the Hong Kong protests were “a thorn in Xi Jinping’s side.”
He said: “If this were to go the way Beijing would like it to, it would be a large military parade and spectacle that people would watch and think, ‘Look how far China has come. Look how far China has come since 1949. But also, look how far it’s gone since the period of Mao or even just a couple decades ago with how high-tech it is now.’”
However, the protests, he explained “implicitly question whether China has really changed all that much since 70 years ago when China was under the control of a dictatorial one-party state that the communists claimed needed to be overthrown for a new China to be born.”
In the run-up to National Day, which this year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic, the Chinese flag has been burned and bunting and banners promoting the Oct. 1 celebrations destroyed by protesters seeking greater freedom for Hong Kong if not self-determination or independence.
Over the weekend, protesters also lobbed petrol bombs at government offices and fought running battles with police, who responded with tear gas, water cannon, and live rounds fired in warning.
Hong Kong has endured four months of unrest, sparked by a now withdrawn extradition bill that would have allowed rendition of fugitive suspects to China for the first time. The initial protests quickly expanded into a democratic rebellion and repudiation of Beijing’s sovereignty.
The longtime British possession was retroceded to China in 1997 after 156 years of colonial rule, but its 7.2 million inhabitants remain culturally and linguistically distinct from mainland Chinese.
—With reporting by Laignee Barron, Aria Chen, Amy Gunia, Abhishyant Kidangoor and Hillary Leung
