Hundreds of Hong Kong students were protesting outside government headquarters on Friday evening to conclude a week-long protest against the Chinese government’s restrictions on the territory’s election rules.
Thousands of university students have been skipping classes, while 1,500 secondary school pupils as young as twelve joined the boycott on Friday, according to organizers.
Meanwhile, pro-government groups staged their own rally on Friday in the adjacent Tamar Park, in celebration of China’s upcoming National Day holiday.
Around 150 university students spent the previous night camped outside the residence of Hong Kong’s current leader, Leung Chun-ying, to demand a meeting with him.
At 7:30 am on Friday (2330 GMT Thursday), 19 students were briefly held by police after attempting to break through police barriers to reach Leung.
A manifesto published by the Hong Kong Federation of Students calls for Beijing to withdraw its election reform plan and issue an “apology to the Hong Kong people.”
Students are also calling for the resignation of the city’s top three officials and demanding that citizens be allowed to nominate candidates for the next chief executive election.
The protests followed a decision last month by China’s top legislative body to restrict the right of Hong Kong residents to elect their next leader in 2017.
A 1,200-member committee will nominate two or three candidates for the election, according to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.
The candidate who wins the popular vote would also have to be formally appointed by the central government before taking office.
“The nominating committee is dominated by pro-Beijing business leaders who have a strong interest in maintaining the status quo,” said University of Hong Kong student union president Yvonne Leung.
“Fighting for universal suffrage is very related to turning against capitalistic exploitation,” she said.
About 380 local academics and university staff have signed a petition in support of the students and some academics have delivered public lectures on political reform topics at the student rally site in Admiralty on Hong Kong Island.
Mirana Szeto, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong, said the students’ goals appear broader and more concerned about economic inequality than the older generation of democracy activists.
A group opposed to the protesters has established a hotline to counter the plans by informing schools and the Education Bureau about student activities.
“Students are wasting their time and disrespecting teachers and parents with their extreme actions,” said bystander To Kai-chung, a retired shopkeeper.
The student strike was organized independently of Occupy Central, an alliance of pro-democracy activists. Occupy Central plans to stage a mass sit-in that would block streets in Hong Kong’s business district and will hold a rally on October 1 as a “curtain raiser” for the civil disobedience movement.
Many students who participated in the boycott said they did not plan to take part in the Occupy Central sit-in because they did not want to break any laws.
“I think as students, we have to think about our future careers and responsibility to our families, but this doesn’t mean we will accept China’s decision,” said Don Tsang, a 20-year-old student studying English at the University of Hong Kong.
Britain negotiated the “one country, two systems” principle as part of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule.
It grants freedoms to Hong Kong residents that are not given to ordinary Chinese citizens and allows Hong Kong relative autonomy until 2047.
GNA
