Waving colonial-era flags and chanting anti-Beijing slogans, more than half a million protesters took to the streets of Hong Kong to rally for democratic reforms yesterday, 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, which Beijing branded “illegal and invalid”.
