Mon 02 September 2019:
As young people in Hong Kong went back to school, more than 1,000 secondary students joined a rally in the heart of the city, huddling under canopies and trying to stay dry despite torrential downpours.
“I can skip homework for today, but if I lose Hong Kong what’s left for me?” said Pearl Wong, 16, who arrived with four other classmates after a half-day of lessons. “That’s why it’s important for me to come out to voice my support for democracy.”
All of them donned surgical masks to protect their identity, although they expected their legal and relatively small gathering would not invite a police crackdown.
On the stage, a black banner in Chinese summed up their rallying cry: ‘Without a future, why bother go to school?’
“Hong Kong is still free, but if I don’t stand up for my freedoms now I might regret it someday,” said Thomas Tsang, 15. “Then it’d be too late.”
Universities were also due to resume classes on Monday after the summer break, but students – who have been at the heart of the protest movement – are planning a two-week boycott.
The political awakening of the city’s younger generations parallels Hong Kong’s transformation from a British colony to a semi-autonomous region of China.
Over the past decade, students, even those attending primary school, have been at the forefront of successive protest movements.
In an article published in the China Daily on Monday, Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong’s first chief executive following the handover was quoted saying the curriculum, had been a failure.
“It is one of the reasons behind the youth problems today,” the mainland paper quoted Tung as saying.
Authorities had hoped the protest movement, which some have come to dub Hong Kong’s Freedom Summer, would fizzle once classes resumed, but the students seem determined to prove the government wrong.
“Our city’s officials have all but abandoned us, and their talks mean nothing,” said AC Chan, Pearl and Thomas’s classmate.
“We’ll keep coming out to bring the pressure to bear.”
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