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Hundreds of young people in Macau staged a rally yesterday calling for universal suffrage.

They were protesting against their government’s legislative and election reform plans and “unprecedented” censorship of media coverage of the public consultation.

Protesters said the media were portraying the public as having reached a consensus on the government’s proposals.

And in a rare move, scores of reporters covering the Labour Day rally wore black clothes to protest against the censorship, they said.

“The government is using its propaganda machinery to manipulate public opinion. The whole public consultation was very ugly,” said Scott Chiang Ming-hin, vice-president of Macau Youth Dynamics, the protest organiser.

The government plans to add two directly-elected and two indirectly-elected legislative seats – similar to functional constituencies in Hong Kong – to the present 29 seats in the Legislative Council.

It also proposed expanding the chief executive election committee from 300 to 400 people.

The…