The crowd of more than 3,000 Hong Kong protesters, many wearing black and in now-banned face masks, some carrying British and colonial flags, was building fast in Victoria Park, next to the Causeway Bay shopping district, under a hot autumn sun.

Pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong urged 100,000 Hong Kong protesters to take part on the 22nd straight weekend of protest, Reuters reported.

Anti-riot Police Tactical Unit vans were already in waiting on the narrow side-streets around the Central business district to the west, the marchers’ destination later in the afternoon.

Protesters have taken to the streets for five months of sometimes violent unrest, angry at perceived Chinese meddling with Hong Kong’s freedoms, including its legal system and politics. China denies the charge.

Activists have attacked police with petrol bombs, set street fires and trashed government buildings and businesses seen as pro-Beijing.

One policeman was slashed in the neck with a knife last month.

Police have responded with tear gas, pepper spray, water cannon, rubber bullets and occasional live rounds. Several people have been wounded.

Saturday’s rally was not given official police permission, as is required, but that has not stopped people gathering in the past. Many were wearing face masks, banned under a resuscitated colonial-era emergency law which has been widely ignored.

Around 100 district council election candidates were meeting small gatherings of people. Under the law, they can meet with up to 50 people per candidate, which they say gives them cover to assemble 5,000 people in the park legally.

Wong was disqualified on Tuesday from standing in the upcoming district elections, a move he said was “clearly politically driven”.

“If more and more people, not only a few thousand, but if more than 100,000 Hong Kongers take to the streets tomorrow, it can let the world know how Hong Kong people fight for a free election,” he told reporters on Friday.

The bespectacled Wong was a leader of the student-led pro-democracy street protests of 2014 but has not been in the forefront of the current unrest.

Government data on Thursday confirmed that Hong Kong slid into recession in the third quarter for the first time since the global financial crisis of 2008. Retail sales fell 18.3% in value in September from a year earlier, an eighth consecutive month of decline.

Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous “special administrative region” of China according to the “one country, two systems” formula under which it returned to Chinese rule.

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The closure of the entire MTR network that handles more than 4 million trips a day, including the express line to the Hong Kong international airport, was a major and quite exceptional disruption for the usually never-resting but now edgy and restive territory of 7.5 million people. Iran News covers the reports of Hong Kong riots.

“From MTR to EmptyR,” tweeted activist Joshua Wong, a key player in 2014 protests that foreshadowed the past four months of demonstrations. Snowballing into a sustained outburst of anti-government and anti-China fury, the youth-led protests have plunged the international hub for trade and finance into its deepest crisis since the territory reverted from British to Chinese rule in 1997.

“Can’t go anywhere,” said Kevin Cui, a tourist from mainland China who’d planned to visit Disneyland only to discover at a shuttered subway station in central Hong Kong that the network was suspended. “This is very troublesome.”

After widespread overnight arson attacks, looting, fighting with police and beatings, the government on Saturday appealed for a public shift in attitude against rioting.

John Lee, the government’s security secretary, said by not condemning violence, people are stoking it, AFP reported.

“What is adding oil to violence is people’s support for these acts,” he said. “What is important is that everybody comes out to say, ‘No, society will not accept violence.'”

But even many peaceful protesters say violence has become a means to an end, the only way for young masked protesters to force the government to bend.

As a group of black-clad youths in protective gear rushed past him, many carrying bamboo sticks, a property industry worker who came out with his wife Friday night to show his opposition to the mask ban expressed his admiration for those confronting police.

“I know they have done terrible things” he said. “Can you believe how brave they are?”

He gave only his first name, Alex. He and his wife, Pauline, both donned masks that covered their mouths to hit streets hit by Hong Kong riots where clouds of police tear gas to disperse protesters also caused spluttering tourists and Friday night revelers to flee, eyes stinging.

Embattled Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam insisted that criminalizing the wearing of masks at rallies and her use of rarely deployed emergency powers to introduce the ban without legislative approval were not a move toward authoritarian rule or at the behest of the Chinese government.

International observers worried, however, that her resort to the Emergency Ordinance that had lain dormant since last used to quell riots in 1967 could be a harbinger of harsher measures in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory deeply attached to its special freedoms and fearful of becoming a tightly controlled city like all the others in China.

The mask ban went into effect Saturday. Two activists filed legal challenges late Friday on grounds it would instill fear and curtail freedom of assembly, but a court denied their request for an injunction.

Lam announced the measure Friday afternoon as thousands of masked protesters crammed streets in the central business district, with some offices closing early and spilling workers into the demonstrations. Protesters shouted “Hong Kong people, resist!” Under the cover of darkness, masked protesters rampaged, setting fires, setting up makeshift road blocks that backed up traffic and vandalizing subway stations, China-linked business and other property.

An officer fired a single shot from his gun in self-defense after he was attacked by protesters in Hong Kong riots, said police spokeswoman Yolanda Yu. She said a man was wounded, but police didn’t know exactly how he got shot. A police official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the news media, said the victim is 14. A Hospital Authority spokesman said the teen was in serious but not critical condition.

The teen became the second victim of gunfire in the protests that began in June. An 18-year-old protester was also shot at close range by a riot police officer on Tuesday.

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Arrests made throughout Hong Kong

HONG KONG, CHINA – OCTOBER 1: Protestors set up barricades during a rally in Shatin area on the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, in Hong Kong, China. Pro-democracy protesters marked the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in Hong Kong through demonstrations as the city remains on the edge with the anti-government movement entering its fourth month. Protesters in Hong Kong continue to call for Chief Executive Carrie Lam to meet their remaining demands since the controversial extradition bill has been withdrawn, which include an independent inquiry into police brutality, the retraction of the word “riot” to describe the rallies, and genuine universal suffrage, as the territory faces a leadership crisis. (Photo by Billy H.C. Kwok/Getty Images)

Riot police, armed with batons and full-body shields, are out in several locations across the city. They have fired tear gas and rubber bullets, as well as shooting blue dye from water cannons. They have also made multiple arrests.

It’s the 16th week of Hong Kong protesters coming to streets and shouting their demand of communist china ruling over their country.

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