MOSCOW, February 1 (Sputnik) – Up to 50,000 people are expected to take to the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday; they demand that Hong Kong’s chief executive should be freely elected, according to an AFP report.
"The rally continues to call out to people to join the democracy movement," the agency quotes organizer Daisy Chan as saying.
Chan added that the rally would show that the Occupy Central movement, as the protests were known, was a political awakening for the people of the former British colony.
"In the past years, these citizens were less political than they are right now. The Occupy movement woke people up," she said.
The march is the first big rally to hit the city since last year's mass protests.
The demonstrations started in late September and lasted for more than two months, after years of disagreements over how the city’s leader should be chosen in the future.
Chinese authorities have promised Hong Kongers the right to vote for their chief executive in 2017, but ruled that the nominees would have to be selected by a pro-Beijing committee.
The officials cleared the final protest camps in December. The group was also known as Umbrella Movement; it occupied several major city intersections and brought roads to a standstill.
A large police presence is in force to deter protesters from reoccupying key areas of Hong Kong this time. Around 2,000 officers have been deployed to prevent any trouble.
