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		</div><p>Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters have donned cartoon character masks and mocked China’s leaders while forming human chains in defiance of a ban on face coverings at public assemblies.</p>
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<p>Gathering along the city’s subway lines on Friday night, many protest supporters masqueraded as Winnie-the-Pooh or Guy Fawkes.</p>
<p>They held up their phone lights and chanted slogans calling for a “revolution of our times” — a battle cry of the five-month-long movement that has shaken the semi-autonomous Chinese city with violent confrontations between protesters and police.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-142293" src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/6656EA7C-2BEC-42CC-8135-4FB8EDACBE3C.jpeg" alt="" width="600" height="400" /></p>
<p>Chinese internet users have joked that Chinese president Xi Jinping resembles AA Milne’s talking bear character as depicted in the Walt Disney animated movies – leading the country’s censors to scrub online references to it.</p>
<p>Fawkes masks have come to represent anti-government protests around the world.</p>
<p>The protesters were taking a light-hearted approach to oppose the government’s decision this month to invoke colonial-era emergency regulations banning face masks at rallies as it struggles to contain the protests.</p>
<p>The peaceful event comes ahead of a mass rally that organisers are planning on Sunday to press their demands.</p>
<p>Police refused to authorise the march, citing risks to public safety and order, but protesters have previously ignored such rejections.</p>
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<figure id="attachment_142296" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-142296" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="size-full wp-image-142296" src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/FC0648B9-976B-44B5-A07D-16A6DD4D71EB.jpeg" alt="" width="600" height="400" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-142296" class="wp-caption-text">One mask combines Winnie-the-Pooh with Xi Jinping</figcaption></figure>
<p>Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam has said the ban on masks, which have become a hallmark of the protests, is aimed at deterring radical behaviour. Offenders can be punished by up to a year in prison.</p>
<p>But the protesters say they wear them out of fear of retribution and concerns that their identities will be shared with China’s massive state security apparatus.</p>
<p>This month, two police shootings that injured teenage protesters, the stabbing of a police officer, and the detonation of a small, remote-controlled bomb close to police officers ratcheted up violence to levels unprecedented since the former British colony reverted to Chinese rule in 1997.</p>
<p>Some protesters assumed the identity of Mr Xi or Hong Kong’s deeply unpopular Beijing-backed leader. Others wore masks depicting Pepe the Frog, a character that has become a symbol for the Hong Kong protesters who are likely unaware of its association with far-right extremists in the US.</p>
<figure id="attachment_142297" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-142297" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="size-full wp-image-142297" src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/FD8D3566-B1A4-4301-B7AA-688573C88104.jpeg" alt="" width="600" height="408" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-142297" class="wp-caption-text">Authorities have struggled to contain the protests in Hong Kong</figcaption></figure>
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<p>At least one protester parodied NBA basketball star LeBron James. He has been criticised for caving to China’s communist leaders after he suggested free speech can have consequences, following a now-deleted tweet by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey in support of the protests that angered Beijing.</p>
<p>The protesters’ aim was to form human chains extending 25 miles across Hong Kong by tracing the city’s subway system, mimicking a similar event in August.</p>
<p>It is unclear if they achieved that. There were gaps in a part of the chain in one city centre location.</p>
<p>Also on Friday, Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific said passenger traffic to mainland China last month plummeted 23.2% from a year ago, in the latest sign of the protests’ impact on the city’s tourism industry. The decline contributed to a 7.1% drop in overall passenger numbers.</p>
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