A 19-year-old gay rights activist was detained on Saturday in Changsha, Hunan Province for organizing a demonstration in the city without first asking for local police approval. 

His detention came after nearly 100 people took to the streets holding banners promoting gay rights and waving rainbow-colored flags on Friday, one of the demonstrators, Peng Cheng, told the Global Times Monday.

Changsha police arrested five attendees, including Peng, on Saturday morning. They later released four people, but still detained the organizer of the rally, surnamed Xiang, Peng said.

According to the official Sina Weibo account of the Changsha Public Security Bureau (PSB), Xiang will be held in administrative detention for 12 days because he organized some 80 people to demonstrate on the streets without authorization, including Xiaoxiang Dadao and Taizihu Lu, in Changsha's Yuelu district.

The gathering was like a two-hour "peaceful walk," and no officers tried to disperse the crowd, Peng said, noting that only a campus police officer told the group not to shout slogans inside Hunan University. 

"We obeyed all the orders that the police gave us that day," Peng said.

Xiang is the founder of the Changsha With Love Internet Company, the company that sponsored the march, in which participants called for an end to discrimination against homosexuals and transgender people.

Changsha police said via microblog that Xiang had breached China's Law on Assemblies, Processions and Demonstrations for not informing the local PSB of the time, location and route of the protest.

"The arrest was groundless because we weren't trying to protest, but just wanted to promote our company's culture and to let people understand us gay people," Peng said. "We are in talks with the police hoping that they will release Xiang as soon as possible."

Lin Qilei, Xiang's attorney, told the Global Times that his client organized the rally thinking there was no need to report it to the police since it was a company marketing event.

The Changsha PSB could not be reached for comment as of press time.

Local Hunan lawyer Li Jian told the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald that the organizers should have asked for permission for the procession according to Chinese law, but Gan Chaoying, an associate professor in constitutional law from Peking University, told the Global Times that if it was only for company promotion, there was no need to ask. 

"The police arrested the organizer possibly because he rallied a group of people to openly promote homosexuality, which is considered to be hurtful to the good morals of society," said Gan.

Lin said that he plans to initiate an administrative reconsideration or file a lawsuit representing Xiang when his client is released, because he thinks the arrest was inappropriate.