Hong Kong (AFP) - Thousands of Hong Kongers sang a protest anthem and chanted slogans across the city Friday as they marked the one-year anniversary of major clashes between police and pro-democracy demonstrators.
The financial hub's protest movement kicked off on June 9 last year with a huge march against an unpopular extradition bill that would have allowed extraditions to the Chinese mainland.
But it was three days later that the first sustained clashes broke out between protesters and riot police firing tear gas outside the city's legislature.
Such scenes became a weekly, and at times daily, occurrence over the next seven months as Hong Kong was upended by unprecedented unrest fuelled by fears Beijing was eroding the semi-autonomous city's limited freedoms.
Hong Kong enjoys liberties unseen on the mainland as part of the "one country, two systems" deal made when colonial power Britain handed it back to China in 1997.
On Friday night, thousands answered online calls to gather at 8:00 pm (1200 GMT) in local malls and neighbourhoods to chant pro-democracy slogans and sing "Glory to Hong Kong" -- a protest anthem that became hugely popular during the turmoil.
Live television showed rallies taking place in half a dozen districts, defying a ban on public gatherings because of the coronavirus outbreak.
A 28-year-old social worker, who gave his surname So, said anniversaries were a way to keep momentum going, even though crowd sizes at recent protests have been much smaller than last year.
"I came here because our goals have not been achieved, so I have to continue coming out," So told AFP in Causeway Bay, a popular shopping district where hundreds had gathered.
"We have to tell the government that we won't give up, no matter how many of us are left," he added.
'Panic-mongering'
Demonstrators are pushing for an inquiry into police brutality, an amnesty for the roughly 9,000 people arrested over the protests and universal suffrage.
China has refused any major concessions and portrayed the protests as a foreign plot to destabilise the mainland.
Last month it unveiled plans to impose a new national security law on Hong Kong targeting subversion, succession, terrorism and foreign interference.
Beijing says the law will restore order.
But critics, including many Western governments, fear it will bring mainland-style political oppression to a city supposedly guaranteed freedoms and autonomy for 50 years after its handover.
Earlier Friday China described Britain's concerns that the security law might undermine Hong Kong's autonomy as "groundless panic-mongering".
The comments came a day after Britain renewed its call for an independent inquiry to "rebuild trust" and heal divisions.
In an earlier rally Friday more than a hundred students formed a human chain outside a school where a teacher was reportedly fired because she allowed a candidate to play "Glory to Hong Kong" in a music exam.
"Oppose political suppression in school, give a fair explanation to the teacher," the young protesters chanted as they held hands to show solidarity.
"It seems to me like losing a friend," a student, who identified himself as the person who played the protest song, told reporters outside the school.
Beijing has made clear it wants more patriotic education in Hong Kong's schools.
On Thursday the city's education chief Kevin Yeung said students should not sing "political propaganda" songs in schools.
