HONG KONG: 300 demonstrators arrested during rally over election delay

Hong Kong police arrested 300 people after firing several rounds of pepper balls and swooped on protesters who gathered to show their opposition to the decision to postpone key elections.

Reports say hundreds of angry protesters had taken to the streets on Sunday to rally against the postponement of the general elections that should have been held on Sunday and the new security law imposed by China.

Police said that 289 people were arrested, mostly for unlawful assembly as hundreds of protesters took to the streets to demonstrate against the year-long delay to elections for the Legislative Council (Legco).

“I want my right to vote,” activist Leung Kwok-hung, popularly known as Long Hair, was quoted as saying by a local newspaper before he was arrested.

Al Jazeera’s Adrian Brown, reporting from the city, said many people were also carrying out individual acts of defiance across the city, carrying banners or chanting slogans, in protest at the new law.

“These acts are remarkable because these individuals are doing that in the face of the sweeping national security law, which makes chants like that, saying things like that illegal,” he said.

“The demonstrations were also an unconventional one as people tried hard to blend in with regular shoppers in the heart of the city and occasionally chanted slogans or make the hand sign of the opposition.”