On 6 September, the biggest protests in the course of the 2019-20 Hong Kong protests since 1 July occurred in the city. The fresh protests were in a large part due to the day having been the scheduled election day for the Legislative Council; on 31 July, the Hong Kong government had the elections postponed by a year, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, a justification that was widely doubted. The unauthorized protests resulted in nearly 300 arrests, one of them on suspected violation of the national security law, and brought the total number of arrests during the entire protests since June 2019 to above 10,000. The national security law continued to exert a major influence both within Hong Kong and internationally, for its perceived devastating effect on the "One country, two systems" principle forming the foundation of governance in the city, even though Hong Kong and mainland government officials had asserted that it had rather acted as a stabilizer. The state visit of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to five European countries, which concluded on 1 September, was accompanied by protests at each stop, and the topic of Hong Kong was brought up by several of his hosts. The lack of substantial news of twelve detainees who had been caught by Chinese authorities on 23 August in a botched attempt to flee from Hong Kong to Taiwan met with broad condemnation, despite assurances by China that the detained did have legal support. Other news from throughout the month, from disparate areas, suggested that large parts of the population of the city had either rejected the local government's assurances that the national security law would only affect a small minority of the population, or saw the international negative responses and sanctions which were triggered by the law as exacting a heavy and lasting toll on the economy of the city, on top of the just recently calmed third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. (en)
On 6 September, the biggest protests in the course of the 2019-20 Hong Kong protests since 1 July occurred in the city. The fresh protests were in a large part due to the day having been the scheduled election day for the Legislative Council; on 31 July, the Hong Kong government had the elections postponed by a year, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, a justification that was widely doubted. The unauthorized protests resulted in nearly 300 arrests, one of them on suspected violation of the national security law, and brought the total number of arrests during the entire protests since June 2019 to above 10,000. (en)