Hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers will be marching Tuesday, July 1, to Central district, Hong Kong’s business center, to fight for the right to have a high degree of autonomy. The hot summer would not stop their passion for full democracy.
The pro-democracy group Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP) organized this marching event to be on the 17th anniversary of Hong Kong returning under Chinese rule from British. They are demanding Hong Kong’s right to elect its own chief executive, the highest power of authority.
According to CNN, the protest is inspired by the recent release of Beijing’s controversial white paper that said Hong Kong does not have “full autonomy,” which is not equivalent with China’s agreement with Britain in 1997. Many Hong Kongers believed the paper’s content violated the “one country, two systems” rule.
Hong Kongers want their own democratic chief executive election, but China insists only people who “love China” can be nominated. OCLP conducted a 10-day online election that started June 20 that proposed three methods of electing Hong Kong’s chief executive, all three proposing candidates should be nominated by the public, regardless of whether they “love China” or not.
The organization expected 100,000 people to participate but ended up gaining 787,767 votes that supported public nomination and ignored the “love China” requirement.
“Whatever Beijing says in public now, I think it can hardly afford to ignore the voices of 780,000 people,” Anson Chan, former chief secretary of Hong Kong, said in a CNN interview Monday.
Photo: flickr/Thomas Galvez
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