Police arrest 500 after huge Hong Kong protest

Hong Kong police arrested more than 500 protesters at a sit-in early Wednesday following a huge march that organisers said mobilised half a million people demanding democratic reforms.
      
The arrests followed the largely peaceful march on Tuesday that protest leaders said brought the biggest crowds onto the streets since the city was handed over from Britain to China in 1997.
      
Police moved in at 3 am to break up the sit-in by about 2,000 protesters in the semi-autonomous city's Central financial district.        

They said 511 demonstrators were arrested for illegal assembly or obstructing police, but pro-democracy activists and Amnesty International criticised the move as excessive.
      
Several pro-democracy lawmakers were among those arrested.
      
Police lifted activists, many lying on the ground with their arms chained to each other, onto coaches that took them to a temporary detention centre at a police college in Wong Chuk Hang district.
      
"I have no regrets!" one of them shouted, while others flashed V-for-victory signs.
      
Some of those detained were  released without charge.
      
Discontent in Hong Kong is at its highest level in years over Beijing's insistence that it vet candidates before a vote in 2017 for the city's next leader.
      
Pro-democracy group Occupy Central has said it will stage a mass sit-in in Central later this year unless authorities come up with acceptable electoral reforms.
      
Hong Kong enjoys liberties not seen on the mainland, including free speech and the right to protest, but there are heightened fears that those freedoms are being eroded.
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