China station next target for Hong Kong protesters

ANTI- GOVERNMENT protesters in Hong Kong plan to rally later Sunday outside a controversial station where high-speed trains depart for the Chinese mainland as they try to turn up pressure on the city’s pro-Beijing leaders.

The rally is the first major protest planned since last Monday’s unprecedented storming of parliament by largely young, masked protesters -- a move which plunged the international financial hub further into crisis.

Hong Kong has been rocked by a month of huge peaceful protests as well as a series of separate violent confrontations with police, sparked by a law that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China.

The bill has since been postponed in response to the huge backlash but that has done little to quell public anger which has evolved into a wider movement calling for democratic reforms and a halt to sliding freedoms in the semiautonomous city.

Protesters are demanding the bill be scrapped entirely, an independent inquiry into police use of tear gas and rubber bullets, an amnesty for those arrested and for the city’s unelected leader Carrie Lam to step down.

Beijing has thrown its full support behind Lam, calling on Hong Kong police to pursue anyone involved in the parliament storming and other clashes.