More Than A Million March Over Extradition Plans

More than a million people joined Sunday's march to oppose extradition law changes, organisers said, making it the biggest protest by far since the 1997 handover.

Jimmy Sham from the Civil Human Rights Front said they came up with their figure of 1.03 million participants thanks to volunteers counting marchers as they made their way along Hennessy Road.

He said with a turnout like this, Chief Executive Carrie Lam has to respond to the public's demand for her to drop her extradition plans.

The police said at its peak there were 240,000 people on the march.

Localist groups urged people to surround Legco from Sunday night to continue their fight against the legal amendments, but the front said it was yet to decide its next course of action.

The crowd that had gathered at Victoria Park in the afternoon had grown so big that the march set off half an hour earlier than scheduled. The last of the marchers only left the park at around 7pm, four and a half hours after those at the front set off.

The MTR had brought in crowd-control measures with trains not stopping at some stations.

There was a brief standoff when protesters, angry at how slow the march was proceeding along Hennessy Road, ignored police warnings and climbed over barricades separating the westbound lanes set aside for them into the eastbound lanes kept open to traffic.

Eventually, police decided to open all the lanes to the marchers.

Late into the evening, demonstrators were still flooding into the area around Legco, the finishing point for the march. The police urged people to leave quickly to make room for those yet to arrive.

While the last of the marchers were reaching the legislature, a large crowd of people occupied Harcourt Road in Admiralty. Officers repeatedly warned them that they were breaking the law.

Police fired pepper spray at several people wearing masks after they ran into part of the road that was still open to traffic.

Meanwhile, a number of demonstrators were attempting to stage a sit-in protest outside Legco.