People attend a prayer rally in Hong Kong’s Tamar Park on November 9, 2019, in memory of 22-year-old university student Alex Chow who succumbed November 8 to head injuries sustained during a fall as police skirmished with demonstrators last weekend. Tens of thousands of Hong Kongers packed into a park November 9 to mourn a student who died during recent clashes as police arrested a group of pro-democracy lawmakers, deepening the city’s political crisis.
The huge rally — one of the few in recent months to obtain police approval — means Hong Kong has witnessed 24 weekends of protest in what has become the most profound challenge to Beijing’s rule since the 1997 handover.“I want an independent inquiry because that proves Hong Kong is still a place with rule of law,” a 35-year-old woman, who gave her surname Wong, told AFP, echoing the movement’s core demand for an investigation into police tactics.
The charges relate to chaotic scenes that broke out within a legislative committee in May as pro-democracy lawmakers tried to stop a controversial bill being discussed that would allow extraditions to authoritarian mainland China. Hong Kong’s legislature is quasi-democratic, with half the seats popularly elected and the rest chosen by largely pro-Beijing committees, ensuring the chamber remains stacked with government loyalists.
Chow’s death has only intensified the tinderbox atmosphere in what has become a deeply polarised city, with violence escalating on both sides of the ideological divide. That assault came three days after a Mandarin-speaking man shouting pro-Beijing slogans knifed at least three pro-democracy protesters and bit off the ear of a local district councillor.