Students continue protests outside schools as their deadline for Hong Kong government to meet demands looms
- Boycott rally at Baptist University draws 150 people while human chains also formed at Open University and 14 secondary schools
- Students say escalation of violence by more radical protesters is ‘understandable’
Hundreds of secondary and university students staged protests – including class boycotts and human chains – on Tuesday, as part of the continuing demonstrations against the now-withdrawn extradition bill.
Keith Fong Chung-yin, president of the student union of Baptist University (HKBU), where 150 people joined an hour-long class boycott rally at noon, warned of staging another mass protest with other university students if the governments fails to meet all five demands of protesters by Friday.
An estimated 30,000 university students staged a mass rally at Chinese University on September 2 to launch the protests in campuses across the city, with thousands forming human chains and a smaller number boycotting classes in the past week.
Despite Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s announcement last week that she would formally withdraw the bill, protesters say that the government acceding to one of their five demands was too little, too late.
Demonstrators also want an inquiry into the police’s response to the protests; amnesty for arrested protesters; authorities to stop characterising the protests as riots; and universal suffrage.
