VANCOUVER—It was just supposed to be a pro-Hong Kong democracy leaflet campaign.

But when student activist Joel Wan saw threatening messages on social media Friday night that appeared to come from people living in Vancouver who wanted to counterprotest their actions, he called the police.

“I’m glad I did because I didn’t expect this to turn into this chaos right now,” he said from outside Broadway-City Hall station Saturday evening.

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Hundreds of people dressed in black with face masks and yellow umbrellas symbolizing Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement were countered by an equal-sized crowd of people opposing their message Saturday evening outside the high-traffic transit stop on the Canada Line.

The two sides were kept apart by about a dozen Vancouver police officers performing crowd control. Ample shouting, but no violence, broke out across the scene.

Wan showed Star Vancouver the messages that prompted him to call police, one of which showed an image of a gun. An organizer on the other side of the protest, Nicholas Wang, denied that any such threats came from their camp, saying they were just there “to share their message and sing their songs.”

“I didn’t expect there to be so many people today. I don’t think we’re going to turn it into a march because it’s too dangerous with everyone here.”

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Large-scale protests began in Hong Kong about 11 weeks ago in response to a controversial bill that may have allowed people living in Hong Kong to be extradited to China to face charges there. Hong Kong’s government has since said the bill is dead, but protests against the apparent clawing back of the region’s rights have continued.

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Wan said the biggest issue they want to spread awareness about is the police brutality that has taken place in Hong Kong during the protests.

A related issue is media censorship — Wan said people consuming Chinese state media, potentially including people who live in Vancouver, are getting inaccurate information about the protests.

The counter protestors in Vancouver, for example, held signs opposing an independent Hong Kong, although independence is not one of the demands of protestors.

Nicholas Wang, an organizer of the counterprotest, said interest in the cause exploded in a “completely random” way on social media Friday night.

“We wanted to do a peaceful protest and come here,” he said. “As you can see, there is no threat at all. We just support China. We support the police there.”

He said he can’t condemn police actions in Hong Kong because “I don’t know, I’m not there, I can’t tell.”

In Vancouver, fear among some of the pro-Hong Kong democracy protestors was evidenced by the fact that they covered their faces with masks.

“There’s a sense of white terror, where people with different political views can be accused,” Wan said, wearing a mask himself. “I’m going to travel to Hong Kong or even work in China in the future. I’m going to protect myself.”