Hong Kong police planned to use some 1,000 officers to keep order during a mass protest Tuesday against plans to pass anti-subversion laws, rally organisers said.
"We have arranged some 800 marshals to help maintain order at the protest, while the police are expected to deploy nearly 1,000 officers," said Tsoi Yiu-cheong, spokesman for the Civil Human Rights Front, a coalition of more than 40 pro-democracy, religious and rights groups.
The coalition is planning a mass protest over proposed national security legislation which many fear will restrict fundamental freedoms.
An estimated 100,000 people are expected to turn out Tuesday.
"We are confident we will have a peaceful rally," Tsoi said Monday, adding, "the most important thing now is to get more people to attend."
Police commissioner Tsang Yam-pui expressed confidence that the rally would be peaceful.
He told reporters, "we have adequate measures" to maintain peace and order."
The mass rally is being staged at a time when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is visiting Hong Kong to officiate at Tuesday's anniversary of the July 1, 1997 handover of former the British colony to Beijing's sovereignty.
Wen, who was appointed premier in March, told a gathering on his arrival on Sunday that Beijing would continue its commitment to "one country, two systems' policy under which Hong Kong was promised a high degree of autonomy for 50 years following the handover.
But Tsoi said Wen's pledge would not change the coalition's rally plan.
"Mr. Wen should make his assurances in deed and not word, by halting the legislation of anti-subversion law and allow direct suffrage in Hong Kong," Tsoi told AFP.
There is mounting fear the new law banning treason, sedition, theft of state secrets and subversion, which Hong Kong is required to pass under Article 23 of the Basic Law, its mini-constitution, could stifle freedom of speech and strangle free flow of information.
The Hong Kong government dismissed British foreign office concerns Monday that a controversial anti-subversion bill will undermine fundamental rights and freedoms in the territory.
"Our bill will not undermine fundamental rights and freedoms of Hong Kong residents," the statement said, adding there was no question that mainland Chinese laws or national security standards would be extended to Hong Kong.
The legislation is expected to be passed on July 9.
Apart from those protesting against the subversion law, religious groups and professionals dissatisfied with the state of the economy and those unhappy over the government's handling of the SARS outbreak are expected to join the rally.
The 13-week Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crisis caused 296 deaths from 1,755 infections, and wrecked Hong Kong's efforts to revive the economy which has been struggling since the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
A lone woman protester from the radical April Fifth group was dragged away to a designated protest area by a police officers on Monday as she shouted slogans against the anti-subversion law while Wen was touring the Prince of Wales Hospital, one of the centre of Hong Kong's SARS outbreak.
Separately, several mothers of mainland China-born children seeking to live in Hong Kong were seen kneeling and sobbing near the hospital, with a petition to Wen asking him to allow them to live in Hong Kong.
Hundreds of parents have since Friday staged protest to demand the right of abode in the territory for their children.
Hong Kong's courts originally granted permission to the children, born of at least one Hong Kong-based parent, to remain in the former British colony, but the ruling was quashed by Beijing.