Thousands of people dressed in pink on Sunday flocked to Hong Kong’s largest LGBTQ carnival, held outdoors for the first time since 2018, with organisers saying the controversial Gay Games recently hosted by the city have drummed up support for the community. All public speeches at the Pink Dot HK 2023 carnival, however, were cancelled after a request by police to end the event at the West Kowloon Cultural District an hour earlier at 8pm due to crowd control concerns over a nearby fireworks show. “We cannot cut the entertainer programmes as they had already rehearsed,” carnival co-organiser Brian Leung Siu-fai said. “So we decided to cut all the sharing speeches by the involved organisations.”