HONG KONG: Joshua Wong, the teenage face of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, said yesterday he has ended a four-day hunger strike designed to force the government into further talks on political reform.
“Under the strong urging of the doctor, I have stopped the hunger strike,” Wong, who had not eaten in 108 hours, said on his Facebook and Twitter feeds.
The 18-year-old said he felt “extreme physical discomfort, dizziness and weakness in the limbs”.
“Even if I stop the hunger strike, it doesn’t mean that the Hong Kong government can ignore our demands,” Wong said.
Wong and two young female members of his Scholarism student group announced the “indefinite” hunger strike following one of the worst nights of violence at the demonstrations last Sunday.
Wong’s latest announcement came after fellow hunger striker Isabella Lo said she would stop the hunger strike on Friday.
Scholarism said the hunger strike was still ongoing after two more people joined the action.
But in another blow late yesterday, the group confirmed another hunger striker, 17-year-old Prince Wong, had been sent to the hospital on the advice of their doctor.
News footage from TVB News showed an exhausted Wong, a secondary school student who joined the hunger strike with Joshua Wong and Lo on Monday, being stretchered onto an ambulance.
Earlier television news footage showed a weak-looking Joshua Wong being wheeled around the main protest site in Admiralty in a wheelchair.
He and other students on the hunger strike had been camping in tents near the city’s government headquarters during the past week in an attempt to push the government to restart the political reform process.
Over 1,000 people joined a rally last night in the Admiralty protest site to show their support for Wong and other students.
Student-led demonstrators are demanding free leadership elections for the semi-autonomous Chinese city, with the main protest camp continuing to block a stretch of a highway. AFP
