Following yet another record-breaking protest against Hong Kong’s controversial extradition bill yesterday, morning found pockets of protesters still blocking Harcourt Road, though resolve among those who stayed behind appears to be waning.
Organizers of yesterday’s march put the turnout at just under two million, hundreds of thousands more than last Sunday’s already-unprecedented headcount, and more than a quarter of the city’s population, if accurate. Police, who typically give vastly lower figures, put the number at 338,000.
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Though most of the crowd around the city’s Legislative Council, the endpoint of the march, had dispersed by last night, fewer than 100 holdouts remained as of this morning. While police officers pleaded with them to clear the road, they showed little interest in forcing them to move along.
One 35-year-old woman, surnamed Ho, said she decided to stay overnight to “protect the students.”
“I was here on Wednesday, it was absolutely crazy,” she said, referring to another demonstration at LegCo last week that descended into chaos as police sought to disperse unruly protesters, many of them students, with more than 150 rounds of tear gas. “I’m a mom, so I felt I had to protect the kids.”
As for whether she accepted an apology issued by Chief Executive Carrie Lam at the height of yesterday’s protest, one of the marchers’ demands, Ho said, “absolutely not.”
“She calls it an apology, but she hasn’t apologized for the situation and for the police actions,” she said. “She hasn’t even said she would withdraw the bill, she would only pause it. If you pause it, you can bring it back any time. That’s not the same as withdrawing it.”
The bill at the center of the civil unrest that has gripped Hong Kong over the past week would allow, for the first time in decades, extradition to mainland China. The enormous outpouring of opposition was enough to force the previously intransigent pro-Beijing camp to announce it would “pause” work on the bill, but the indefinite suspension was not enough to pacify Hongkongers, who fear the legislation could see them spirited away to face trial in China’s notoriously politicized courts.
“My son is too young to come out here, but he supported me and told me to come out,” Ho said. “I don’t want him to grow up in a world where he says something online and that could get him arrested or extradited.”
Another protester who spent the night at Harcourt Road, surnamed Lee, said he believed the suspension was merely a ploy to discourage further protests, not a genuine about-face on the part of the government.
“There wasn’t really a promise or anything concrete made by the government,” he said. “I always said that if [Lam] wanted to compromise, she would have done so in the first place, when the protest was a million [people on June 9].”
Activists had also called for a citywide strike today, as they had for the huge demonstration on Wednesday, June 12, but the plan doesn’t appear to have struck the same chord as it did then, when it had a clear focus on blocking a planned debate over the controversial bill at the city’s Legislative Council.
“I don’t really think it would ascend to the level that it was on the 12th — there was a lot of protesters,” Lee said. “I don’t think today there would be that much because the strike was a bit chaotically promoted.”
As for why he was still occupying Harcourt, Lee said it was an important, if futile, gesture.
“We all know that holding this road is not that useful; it’s more of a status, showing that we will not be backing up, we will not back off our line,” he said. “That’s why I stayed here, to see what we can do.”
As of about 10:30 this morning, determination to stay appeared to be weakening, as protesters questioned whether it was appropriate to continue blocking traffic at the site. As they did the morning after Wednesday’s rally, many protesters switched into clean-up mode.
By about 11am, the Harcourt occupation had disbanded, and the flow of traffic was restored.
Reporting by Vicky Wong.
