More students in Hong Kong who have been protesting for more than two months for free elections in 2017 are contemplating joining a hunger strike begun by student leader Joshua Wong and two other activists.
Wong, leader of the student group Scholarism, said at a press conference Wednesday that more students were thinking of taking that route to exert more pressure on the local government to resume dialogue with the protesters on the elections issue.
"We are not saying that we are going to be on strike till we manage to get civil elections. We only want to restart the dialogue," said Wong who has already gone more than 36 hours without food.
Both Wong and the two young women who are also on the hunger strike said that they will continue despite showing symptoms of fatigue and vomiting.
"We want to let the public know that the hunger strike we are on now is a serious one. We want to refocus the public attention on the Umbrella movement," said the student leader, referring to the nickname for the protest.
At the same time that Wong announced the beginning of the hunger strike, leaders of Occupy Central, a pillar organisation of the protests, announced that they would surrender to the authorities Wednesday, indicating a split between the groups of demonstrators.
Meanwhile, the Federation of Students, another of the groups leading the protests, said that although it did not share the positions of the other two, it fully respected their decisions.
"Occupy Central, the Federation of Students, Scholarism and Democrats Legislators each have their own perspective, and it is only natural that they do not always coincide," Wong said in a statement Tuesday in which he defended the "harmony" existing between the different factions.
