Summary: Protesters in Hong Kong gathered peacefully on Sunday morning, but things quickly turned sour when police officers were dispatched and opened fire with tear gas.
On Sunday, protesters gathered in Hong Kong to ask for a popular vote, a democracy. The protesters were peaceful, but things turned ugly when police officers were dispatched. They shot tear gas and used armor to try to move the protesters out of the area. No one left and more and more people arrived by 10 PM that night.
We have embedded a video in this post of one of the protesters. It is only 1:41 in length, but it is a powerful message for those in China and around the world. The protester describes the originally peaceful scene, the interaction by the police and then what everyone protesting wants in a government.
The transcript of the video is as follows:
“Today is the 28th of September, 2014. It’s nearly 10 o’clock in the evening. We’re in Wan Chai in Hong Kong now.
Today, earlier this morning, one protester is peacefully sitting outside the government headquarters and trying to protest against, we want true pop-vote, for Hong Kong’s chief executive election.
However, the government suddenly sent out police with guns, armors, and shields towards us and tried to evacuate us. And everyone sat still and did nothing.
Suddenly Governor started to spray pepper spray towards every, every protester sitting in the front. So, people kept running and screaming loudly. Now, ah, now, we are in Wan Chai. We, ah, we went from, uh, Admiralty to Central and now to Wan Chai.
Everywhere is full of police and protesters. Protesters are trying to protect people still inside government headquarters area.
We are asking for pop-vote only, nothing more and we are really peaceful. However, the government will not hesitate to use pepper spray and every harmful armaments against peaceful protesters.
As a Hong Konger, standing here in Wan Chai, I ask all of you from all over the world, please help us. Maybe, all of your are born from foreign and democracy states. You are, you are born with democracy choices. You have free election right, but we don’t. Please help us. Please spread the news to all over the world. Please voice out for us Hong Konger’s as we really need democracy. We need a pop-vote only. Nothing more. Please support us and spread this video or every news about this event over the world. Thank you.”