HONG KONG (AP) – A man distributing leaflets near a wall with pro-democracy messages was stabbed and wounded, as Hong Kong anti-government protesters prepared to hold an unauthorized march Sunday to press their demands.
Police said they arrested a 22-year-old man Saturday in connection with the knife attack that wounded a 19-year-old.
On Wednesday, a leader of the nearly five-month-old pro-democracy movement, Jimmy Sham, was attacked by assailants wielding hammers and knives as the unrest rocking semi-autonomous Hong Kong turns increasingly violent.
Later Saturday, supporters waving US and British flags held a prayer rally to call for outside help for their cause. The protest march is planned for Sunday, with organizers vowing to hold the event even though it failed to win approval from police, who cited risks to public order.
Protesters are trying to keep the pressure on the government to respond to their demands, including full democracy and an independent inquiry into alleged police brutality. They’re also using Sunday’s rally to raise a more recent demand for the government to scrap a ban installed this month on face masks at public gatherings.
Organizers said demonstrators would defy the police because Hong Kong’s Constitution guarantees the right to protest.
“We don’t think that because police haven’t given their approval we shouldn’t demonstrate,” Figo Chan, vice convener of the Civil Human Rights Front, told reporters. “Even though they have rejected our appeal, there will surely be many residents taking to the streets.”
Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Democratic Rep. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, wrote tech company Apple and video game studio Activision Blizzard to condemn what they called protest-related censorship on behalf of China.
The group urged Apple to reverse its decision to remove from its app store the crowd-sourced mapping app HKMaplive that was used to report police locations so that they could be avoided.