DHAKA: Thousands of pro-democracy protesters will rally on Hong Kong’s streets on Sunday for the first time since mass demonstrations shut down parts of the city for more than two months.

The afternoon march through central Hong Kong is expected to draw 50,000 people, with the police warning that attempts to reoccupy key roads cleared of a sea of tented protest camps in December ‘are likely’.

However, no protest group has announced it intends to relaunch the occupation.

It is set to gauge the public’s appetite for the continued fight for free leadership elections, with the authorities having made no concessions to activists’ demands and tensions still high in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.

‘The rally continues to call out to people to join the democracy movement,’ organiser Daisy Chan told the media, reports The Straits Times.

Chan said the rally would show that the Occupy movement, as the protests were known, was a political awakening for Hong Kong people.

‘In the past years, these citizens were less political than they are right now. The Occupy movement woke people up.’

BDST: 1040 HRS, FEB 01, 2015