Joshua Wong (黃之鋒), the teenage face of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, said yesterday that he has ended a four-day hunger strike designed to force Beijing 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 Facebook and Twitter.
The 18-year-old said he felt “extreme physical discomfort, dizziness and weakness in the limbs.”
“Even if I stop the hunger strike, it does not 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 after Sunday last week — one of the worst nights of violence to hit the demonstrations.
Wong’s announcement came after fellow hunger-striker Isabella Lo (盧彥慧) said she would stop the hunger strike on Friday, days after two others joined in the effort.
Student-led demonstrators are demanding free leadership elections for the territory, with the main protest camp continuing to block a long stretch of a highway in central Hong Kong.
Beijing authorities insist that candidates for the 2017 vote must be vetted by a committee, which the protesters say would ensure the election of a pro-Beijing stooge.
Before Wong called off the strike, Hong Kong’s government said it would not allow a hunger strike to affect its decisionmaking.
“As a government, we will not accept any illegal actions ... or actions like a hunger strike to persuade us to make any concessions,” Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Raymond Tam (譚志源) told reporters.
The rallies for fully free leadership elections, which are in their third month, drew tens of thousands at their height, but numbers have dwindled as public support for the movement has waned.
One prominent protest leader said the students would decide “within a week” whether to leave two remaining camps in the center of Hong Kong after authorities cleared a third last week.
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