Update | Up to 3,000 secondary students join pro-democracy protest on final day of class boycott
'We boycott class for our future,' Scholarism convener Joshua Wong says in strike manifesto
More than 1,200 pupils filled Tim Mei Avenue to join one of the city’s few large-scale secondary school strikes this morning in a turnout far higher than expected, organisers said. And activist group Scholarism said 3,000 pupils in total turned out for an afterschool rally at the same location, which ended at 6pm.
"We originally thought only 100 students would join the strike. The turnout is 15 times our estimate and is completely out of our expectation," said the group's spokesman Agnes Chow Ting. "[The turnout] reflects there's a need to reform the [political] system... the government should listen to the public opinion."
Watch: Secondary school pupils share their views on the class boycott
As the afterschool rally finished, some pupils joined another rally outside government headquarters where hundreds of striking tertiary students had gathered.
Speaking at the later rally, Scholarism convenor Joshua Wong Chi-fung called on the rest of Hong Kong's residents to follow the students' example and to fight for democracy.
"Now the red light is on for Hong Kong's democratic future, and students, who could pay the highest cost [for protest], are on strike. Just where are the grown-ups?" Wong asked.