Protesters gird for march for demands

Hong Kong rally isn’t authorized by police

HONG KONG — Hong Kong anti-government protesters are set for another weekend of civil disobedience as they prepare to hold an unauthorized protest march to press their demands.

Supporters held a prayer rally on Saturday night to call for international help for their cause. The protest march is planned for Sunday, with organizers vowing to hold the event even though it failed to win approval from police, who cited risks to public order.

As the semi-autonomous Chinese territory’s political crisis extends into a fifth month, protesters are trying to keep the pressure on the government to respond to their demands, including full democracy and an independent inquiry into alleged police brutality.

They’re also using Sunday’s rally to raise a more recent demand for the government to scrap a ban installed this month on face masks at public gatherings.

Organizers said demonstrators would defy the police because Hong Kong’s constitution guarantees the right to protest.

“We don’t think that because police haven’t given their approval we shouldn’t demonstrate,” Figo Chan, vice-convener of the Civil Human Rights Front, told reporters. “Even though they have rejected our appeal, there will surely be many residents taking to the streets.”

Police said they arrested a 22-yearold man Saturday after a teenager was stabbed and wounded. The 19-year-old man was attacked while he was handing out leaflets near a wall decorated with pro-democracy messages, media reports said.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas., and Rep. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., wrote to tech company Apple and video game studio Activision Blizzard to condemn what they called protest-related censorship on behalf of China.

The group urged Apple to reverse its decision to remove from its app store the crowdsourced mapping app HKMaplive that was used to report police locations.

They also wrote to Activision to reconsider its decision to suspend a Hong Kong gamer after he voiced support for the protesters.

Mark Schiefelbein The Associated Press Pro-democracy protesters use illumination lights to form a slogan as they attend a prayer rally Saturday at Edinburgh Place in Hong Kong.