HONG KONG: Striking students marched on Hong Kong’s financial district yesterday, taking their protest for greater democracy to the city’s commercial centre for the first time.
Student groups are currently leading a civil disobedience campaign by a coalition of democracy activists protesting against a recent decision by Beijing to vet who can stand for the city’s top post at the next election.
University students began a week-long class boycott on Monday, rallying a crowd that organisers said was 13,000-strong on a campus in the north of the city and breathing new life into a movement that had been stunned by Beijing’s hardline stance.
On Tuesday the students moved to a public park outside the main legislative complex of the semi-autonomous Chinese city, briefly mobbing Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying.
Around 300 students made their way from the city’s Tamar Park to Central district, where many major international companies are based. Shouts of “We want democracy!” amplified by bullhorns echoed around the district famously dominated by towering skyscrapers.
“This march is to show the rich, the people working in Central, the people with real power in Hong Kong, that they can’t ignore this grassroots movement,” said Nathaniel Siu, 18, an applied social science student at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Siu said that his mother, who works in one of the office buildings along the protest route, does not approve of his activism, adding that dinner conversations have become increasingly awkward at home
“Walking to Central shows more people we really care about democracy, that we’re serious. We’re not just sitting in a park anymore,” said Tiffany Fong as she pointed a handheld fan towards her face in the humid Hong Kong weather.
Occupy Central, a prominent grassroots pro-democracy group, has vowed to take over Central if its demand that Hong Kongers be allowed to nominate candidates for leader is not met.
Last month China said Hong Kongers would be allowed to vote for their leader for the first time in the 2017 election, but that only two or three candidates approved by a pro-Beijing committee would be allowed to stand.
The students are not expected to engage in direct action imminently. Federation of Students leader Alex Chow has given Leung until today morning to meet their delegates. AFP
