The rally was organised by several Chinese associations in France, and as with previous rallies held over the past week, there were sporadic skirmishes between protesters and security forces.

Some of the demonstrators threw bottles, eggs and fruit, prompting the police to respond with tear gas during clashes that lasted more than an hour, according to an AFP photographer.

On March 26, Liu Shaoyo, a 56-year-old father of five, was shot by a police team called to his apartment in northeast Paris over a suspected domestic dispute.

Authorities say he attacked a policeman with a knife, causing injuries, and that another officer opened fire in self-defence, killing him.

But the dead man’s family disputes the police version of the incident, saying that there was no domestic dispute and that he was shot without warning after a neighbour called the police about shouting.

The police are investigating the incident, and Beijing has called on Paris to “guarantee the safety and legal rights and interests of Chinese citizens in France.

“We want to maintain pressure and support the family to establish the truth and fight police violence,” said Sacha Lin Jung of the Chinese Residents in France association, one of the protest’s organisers.

Around 200,000 to 300,000 Chinese are estimated to live in Paris.//AFP

The voting to fill 19 seats in the national and regional parliaments was seen as a test of the democracy icon’s popularity after a bumpy first year in office.

Her National League for Democracy (NLD) stormed to power in a historic 2015 poll that ended half a century of brutal military rule.

But disillusionment with the administration has grown as the young government struggles to push through democratic reforms, kick-start the economy and ease unrest along the borders.

The NLD’s comfortable majority was never threatened by Saturday’s by-elections, with less than five per cent of the population eligible to vote in races held mostly to fill seats emptied by politicians who took on ministerial posts.

Results that trickled in Sunday showed the party is still strong in its heartland areas. But it revealed a measure of discontent among Myanmar’s ethnic minorities, who have long struggled under the rule of the Bamar majority to which Suu Kyi belongs.

The NLD fared well in its strongholds around the commercial capital Yangon and in central regions further north, winning seats in nine races, according to results announced by Union Election Commission chairman Hla Thein.

But it faced losses in more remote areas, including in ethnic minority regions where insurgent violence has continued despite Suu Kyi’s promise to bring peace after decades of strife.

The most embarrassing defeat was in the southern state of Mon, where the NLD lost a lower house seat to its main opposition — the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

The NLD had comfortably won that race just over a year ago when it trounced the USDP nationwide.

The NLD sparked mass protests in Mon last month by naming a local bridge after Suu Kyi’s father — a move seen as emblematic of the Bamar elite’s steamrollering of minority cultures.

The NLD also came up short in a race in Rakhine, a western state embroiled in ethnic and religious conflict.

That lower house seat was taken by the chairman of the local Arakan National Party, a politician known for his hardline stance against the Muslim Rohingya.

The one-million strong Rohingya live mostly in Rakhine and are loathed by many Buddhists, who see them as outsiders.

Since October they have become the target of an army crackdown so brutal that UN investigators believe it may amount to a crime against humanity.

The crisis has posed a major moral challenge to Suu Kyi, who must contend with both international pressure to defend the Rohingya and hatred of the group by many at home.

She has faced international criticism for not speaking out against the alleged abuses.

Up in the northeast, an ethnic Shan party won several races held in areas where voting had been cancelled in 2015 because of unrest. The NLD and USDP also each took one regional parliament seat.

Clashes between the army and ethnic insurgents have since moved further north but continue to thwart the NLD’s peace bid.

In a rare national address last week, Suu Kyi stressed her commitment to the nation but admitted that reforms had stalled in some areas.

Striking an unusually conciliatory note, she said the NLD “would be more than happy and ready to step aside” if there were others “more qualified than us to achieve better results”.

Nineteen people were also injured when the landslide slammed into 32 houses in the village of Banaran in Ponorogo district, East Java on Saturday morning.

Search and rescue teams were searching for missing people but heavy rain on Sunday afternoon forced them to stop, the national disaster agency spokesman said.

“The challenge is the road to the disaster zone is very narrow…and there are many cars now because people want to watch, so they interrupt or hinder the mobility of the team,” national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purno Nugroho said.

Villagers were warned about potential landslides two weeks ago and evacuated the area at night, but many returned to the village the next morning.

Many of the missing people were working on ginger farms when the landslide struck.

This year alone 20 people have died in landslides in Indonesia, the agency noted.

Last September nearly 30 people died in heavy flooding and landslides in Garut, West Java.

Carrie Lam was selected as the new chief executive Sunday by a committee dominated by pro-China voters, but promised to try to unify the deeply divided city.

The vote was dismissed as a sham by democracy campaigners who fear Beijing is tightening its grip on semi-autonomous Hong Kong and say Lam will be no different from its unpopular current leader, Leung Chun-ying.

Those concerns were heightened Monday when police informed several leading campaigners who took part in the Umbrella Movement of 2014 that they would be charged in connection with the rallies.

The protests saw tens of thousands take to the streets calling for fully free leadership elections, but failed to win concessions from Beijing.

Civic Party lawmaker Tanya Chan told AFP she had received a call from police Friday morning telling her she would be charged with causing a public nuisance, with a maximum sentence of seven years.

“They said it was related to the ‘illegal occupation’ of 2014,” she said, describing it as a “death kiss” from Leung, who will step down in July.

Chan said she had been arrested immediately after the protests, but had never been charged. She will report to a police station Monday evening and will go to court Thursday.

Chan added she would take responsibility for participation in “civil disobedience activity”, but said the timing undermined Lam’s unity pledge.Activist Raphael Wong of the League of Social Democrats told AFP he would also be charged with public nuisance and blamed Leung.

“As Carrie Lam talks about unity, they are saying you don’t need it,” he told AFP.

Professor Chan Kin-man, a founding member of Hong Kong’s Occupy Central, one of the groups behind the protests, also received a call from police informing him of an impending charge and called the move “ridiculous”.

“It shows the government has no intention to heal the divisions,” Chan said.

Local media reported that police informed a total of nine activists that they would face charges.

Lam did not directly respond over whether the move would further divide Hong Kong.

“Prosecution actions are undertaken independently by the department of justice,” she told reporters. She repeated that she wanted unity, but said her approach “should not compromise the rule of law in Hong Kong”.

Pro-democracy campaigner Joshua Wong, one of the leaders of the Umbrella Movement, described the crackdown as “political persecution”.

He was not among those who received a police notice of charges. Wong, legislator Nathan Law and former student protester Alex Chow were all convicted last year for taking part in, or inciting others to take part in, an anti-China protest that led up to the major rallies.

They were given community service or suspended sentences.

Hong Kong has been semi-autonomous since it was handed back to China by colonial ruler Britain in 1997. But 20 years on, there are serious concerns Beijing is disregarding the handover agreement designed to protect Hong Kong’s way of life.

The former career civil servant was chosen as the next chief executive by a mainly pro-China committee and was widely seen as Beijing’s favourite to head the city.

Critics say she will deepen divisions in the city, but Lam said she wanted to unify Hong Kong.

“Hong Kong, our home, is suffering from quite a serious divisiveness and has accumulated a lot of frustrations. My priority will be to heal the divide,” she said after her victory.

Lam pledged to uphold Hong Kong’s semi-autonomous “one country, two systems” set-up and protect its core values, including freedom of expression and an independent judiciary.

Asked how she would address concerns that Beijing is tightening its grip, she said there was “no difference” between the Hong Kong government and Chinese authorities’ views in terms of safeguarding the city’s status and freedoms.

It was the first leadership vote since mass “Umbrella Movement” rallies calling for fully free elections in 2014 failed to secure reforms, and came after a turbulent term under current chief executive Leung Chun-ying.

Leung, who is seen by opponents as a Beijing puppet, will step down in July after five years in charge. Lam, who will be the city’s first woman leader, was formerly his deputy.

An emotional Lam, 59, bowed to supporters as it was announced she had won comprehensively with 777 votes against 365 for John Tsang, seen as a more moderate establishment figure.

The third and most liberal candidate, retired judge Woo Kwok-hing, received just 21 votes. Around three quarters of the 1,194 members of the election committee were from the pro-China camp.

Lam is intensely disliked by the pro-democracy camp after promoting the Beijing-backed political reform package that sparked 2014’s massive protests.

That plan would have allowed the public to choose the city’s leader in 2017, but would have insisted that candidates must be vetted first.

It was eventually voted down in parliament by pro-democracy lawmakers and reforms have been shelved ever since.

Since then frustration among activists has sparked calls for self-determination for Hong Kong, or even a complete split from China.

Hundreds of protesters including leading pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong gathered near the harbourfront voting venue.

Nearby, pro-China supporters played marching music surrounded by national and city flags.Rebel legislator Nathan Law, who as a lawmaker has an automatic vote, said he would enter a blank ballot.

“It is still a selection from the Beijing government,” Law told AFP.|

Uphill struggle

Representatives of a broad number of sectors, from business to education, sit on the committee that chooses the chief executive, but the vast majority of the city’s 3.8 million electorate have no say in the vote. Pro-democracy committee members threw their weight behind Lam’s main rival, ex-finance secretary Tsang.

But activists said he was still on Beijing’s side and rejected the vote outright as unrepresentative of Hong Kong people.

Lam will face an uphill struggle to unite a city in which young people in particular have lost faith in the political system and their own overall prospects.

With salaries too low to meet the cost of property in an overpriced market fuelled by mainland money, getting ahead in life is seen as increasingly difficult.

While she said Sunday she wanted more democracy for Hong Kong, Lam said she intended to prioritise social issues such as housing.

Critics fear she will pave the way for more interference from Beijing after an number of incidents under Leung that rocked public confidence.

They include the disappearance in 2015 of five Hong Kong booksellers known for publishing salacious titles about China’s political elite. The booksellers all resurfaced in detention on the mainland.

Last year, the disqualification from parliament of two publicly elected pro-independence lawmakers following Beijing’s intervention also prompted accusations the city’s legislature had been seriously compromised.//AFP