HK protesters march against Beijing suffrage ruling

By James Pomfret

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Thousands in Hong Kong held a protest march on Sunday calling for direct elections in 2012, in a public rebuke against Beijing's decision not to permit universal suffrage that year, but allow it in 2017 instead.

The peaceful protest march, which police said drew over 6,000 people, was the largest public demonstration in Hong Kong since a landmark ruling by China's parliament on December 29, which barred direct elections in 2012, but left open the possibility of picking the city's leader by universal suffrage in 2017.

Organisers said 22,000 people attended the rally.

"We want universal suffrage in 2012. Return our right for universal suffrage," the crowds chanted into loudhailers.

Wearing black and white clothes, the protesters, led by Hong Kong's elderly Catholic leader Cardinal Joseph Zen, marched several kilometres through Hong Kong's streets and waved banners with such slogans as: "Democracy delayed is democracy denied".

"Hong Kong's democratic development has been too slow, we want it to be faster," said protester Irene Wong, who works in the financial sector and marched with several friends.

But before the protest, Hong Kong's leader Donald Tsang urged the public not to focus on what wasn't possible, and accept Beijing's timetable for delayed democracy in 2017, saying it still represented a "historic opportunity".

"Now that a timetable has been set, I hope everyone will be able to focus on what is possible, rather than what is not," he said in a morning radio programme.