Ever wondered what it would be like to watch thousands upon thousands of Hongkongers pour through an intersection like so much sand through an hourglass? Well, wonder no more!
Yesterday’s record-shattering protests against a controversial plan to allow extradition to mainland China yielded some striking images (a crowd of up a million people will tend to have that effect, after all), but one video making the rounds online today combined the already mind-boggling spectacle of the protest itself with the gee-whiz coolness of time-lapse video.
Time lapse video shared online on how hundreds of thousands marched to protest against an extradition bill #extraditionbill in Hong Kong pic.twitter.com/hOps5KF5VC
— Stella Lee (@StellaLeeHKnews) June 9, 2019
As one commenter rightly noted, it’s “So satisfying when they finally break through to the other lane.”
The organizers of yesterday’s protest estimated the crowd to number just over one million, while police — who routinely give much, much lower fugures — put the number at 240,000. Either way, it was likely the largest protest Hong Kong has seen since 2003, when some 500,000 people (police said it was around 350,000) turned out to demonstrate against a controversial national security bill that had stirred similar concerns as the extradition bill.
Authorities ultimately shelved the national security bill over the widespread opposition — and it hasn’t been reintroduced — so whether the extradition bill will meet a similar fate remains to be seen.
