The Police Department says that approximately 111,800 people took part in the Anti-Occupy Central march on August 17, organised by the Alliance for Peace and Democracy. The march began in Victoria Park in Causeway Bay and ended in Chater Garden in Central.
The organisers of the march say that their preliminary count for the march was 190,000 people, while HKU’s independent count of the Anti-Occupy march put the attendance count at between 79,000 and 88,000. HKU’s count for the July 1 march was between 154,000 and 172,000 people, with the offical police estimate for the democracy march was 98,600.
The NY Times reported that photographs taken at the peak times of the July 1 and Anti-Occupy marches show that far more people were on the streets on July 1, unlike what the official police figures for both marches say. The Wall Street Journal also claims that crowd density “was much less [at the Anti-Occupy march] than on July 1”.
SocREC, an independent pro-Occupy organisation, said on their Facebook page that their count showed that only 41,250 people attended the August 17 march, though apparently that was according to a count made by one guy named Paul:
The organisers of Occupy Central tweeted that SocREC’s method for estimating the attendance count was “probably” the most accurate.
SocREC’s count for the antiOccupy march is 41,250– probably most accurate method: 1 person at WanChai counting https://t.co/T0IldVdrtY
— Occupy Central 和平佔中 (@OCLPHK) August 17, 2014
According to the police, the march was “generally conducted in a peaceful and orderly manner”, although the police did have to intervene in a few incidents involving assault, criminal damage and the most terrible crime of egg-throwing. Four men between the ages of 36 and 58 were arrested.
The NY Times reports that most people at the march were middle-aged or elderly, with the crowd organised into groups corresponding to their mainland hometowns, schools or even employers, with groups often wearing matching t-shirts. Some brought their foreign domestic workers, giving them Chinese flags to wave.
Editor’s note: Information about the police estimates for the July 1 march was added to this article.
