Marchers in Hong Kong demand democracy

Hundreds of thousands of people marched through Hong Kong today, demanding full democracy and venting anger at China’s Communist leaders for denying them the right to directly elect their government.

About 530,000 people participated, according to protest organisers, while police said they had counted 200,000 part way through the rally, which lasted a little more than five hours.

“Only democracy can save Hong Kong,” said 65-year-old Cheuk Kuang, a former driver. “The Communist government is intervening too much in Hong Kong and it’s trying to shut down all opposition voices.”

The march came on the seventh anniversary of the former British colony’s handover to Chinese sovereignty and a year after a protest by a half million people stunned China’s leaders and forced Hong Kong’s government to withdraw an anti-subversion bill that many had viewed as a threat to freedom.

Marchers filled all four lanes of a major road, peacefully chanting slogans, holding up signs and waving inflatable dolls of their unpopular leader, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, as they made their way to the fenced-off Hong Kong government headquarters.

Tung said later he had listened to the people’s complaints and understood their hopes for full democracy.

Tung held out no prospects for quick change, however, saying any political reforms must be “gradual and orderly” as China has insisted.

Tempers have flared since Beijing ruled in April that ordinary citizens cannot elect Tung’s successor in 2007 or all lawmakers in 2008.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said in Beijing that her government was “resolutely opposed to foreign interference” and added that Hong Kong’s political system gave its citizens “real and unprecedented democracy”.