Around 50 people took part in a protest in Liverpool city centre to highlight the ongoing democracy protests in Hong Kong.
The city has witnessed four months of protests after a proposal to allow extradition to mainland China. Although the controversial proposal has since been withdrawn, protesters have continued to clash with government forces.
Last week a teenage protester was shot and wounded by a police officer. Now the government has introduced a ban on the wearing of face masks, which it argues allowed violent protesters to conceal their identity.
Today around 50 protesters gathered in this afternoon to highlight the cause. The protest was captured by photographer Dave the Pap, who shared his footage with the ECHO.
A student who took part in today's protest said it was originally planned to protest police violence, but the face mask law had encouraged them to take a stronger stance.
They held banners which said: "Free Hong Kong" and "Stand With Hong Kong", as well as the old Hong Kong flag, which was replaced after the territory was returned to China in 1997.
The student, who did not want to be named, said: "Most of us are a group of HongKongers studying in the north west region including Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Wales and Sheffield with some UK based Hongkongers.
"We chose the location because its a busy place and it is slightly further from university campus where mainland students mostly gathered who had countered our protest on campus on October 1."
The protesters communicated using Telegram, a secure messaging app.
The student said the response from passers by to the protest in Liverpool had been positive, although many people were not fully aware of what was going on.
Meanwhile in Hong Kong on Sunday, tens of thousands of protestors marched as a court rejected a second attempt to block a ban on masks aimed at quashing violence at pro-democracy rallies.
Police fired tear gas in several areas amid confrontations between officers and demonstrators that have become a regular occurrence during the four-month-old protest movement.
