Thousands of Hong Kong students are due to begin a week-long boycott of classes today, the start of what democracy activists say is to be a wider campaign of civil disobedience against Beijing’s refusal to grant the territory full universal suffrage.
China dashed hopes last month for full and unfettered democracy in the former British colony when it announced plans to vet nominees who want to stand in elections for the next Hong Kong chief executive.
A coalition of pro-democracy groups, led by Occupy Central, have labeled Beijing’s restrictions a “fake democracy” and have vowed a series of actions including a blockade of the territory’s financial district.
Laying the groundwork for what activists call “a new era of civil disobedience,” thousands of students from more than 25 universities and colleges are due to take part in the week-long strike due to start today to voice their anger.
The strike could breathe new life into the democracy campaign, which recently lost some steam after its senior leaders conceded that Beijing was highly unlikely to change its mind whatever the movement does.
“This is a turning point,” Hong Kong Federation of Students chairman Alex Chow Yong Kang (周永康) told reporters. “The government has to respond to what so many Hong Kong people are calling an unfair election system.”
The student agitation comes a week after more than 1,500 activists marched through Hong Kong’s streets carrying huge sheets of black cloth and banners demanding genuine universal suffrage.
That marked the first large-scale protest since China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) ruled late last month that candidates for the 2017 polls would be vetted by a pro-Beijing committee — and just two or three approved nominees would be allowed to stand.
The territory’s democracy activists are demanding free and open nominations for Hong Kong’s chief executive, the top government post.
The success of the university strike — an echo of the student-led Tiananmen protest of 1989 that was brutally crushed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — would be determined by the scale of the turnout, Chow said.
The students can point to their success in 2012, when they were at the forefront of protests against plans by the Hong Kong government to institute a “national education” curriculum seen as pro-China. The government backed down.
However, in Beijing, the rhetoric in official media has remained unrelenting against any concessions to the Hong Kong democracy movement, which some in the communist party see as an insidious threat to their rule of the country as a whole.
More than 3,000 students from Hong Kong’s two main prestigious universities alone are expected to join the strike, organizers predict.
“The legitimacy of the Hong Kong government is very, very low at this stage, and in this situation we wish to redefine the direction of Hong Kong,” Hong Kong University student union president Yvonne Leung (梁麗幗) said.
The strike marks the beginning of the “battle for public opinion” in the territory, Hong Kong Institute of Education professor Sonny Lo (盧兆興) said.
“The class boycott is ... a testimony to the students’ affinity to the Hong Kong political and legal identity,” Lo added.
The NPC’s verdict still needs to win two-thirds support in Hong Kong’s 70-seat legislature, where pro-democracy lawmakers control slightly more than one-third of the seats. All 27 pan-democrats have pledged to reject the vetting plan.
Public discontent has been growing over rising inequality, increased political interference and the perceived cozy relationship between the territory’s powerful business elite and Beijing.
However, opinion polls suggest only lukewarm support for direct action such as the mass sit-in of the Central district promised by the Occupy movement, which is going to be watching the student strike closely as it plots its next move.
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