OCCUPY CENTRAL - DAY 64: Joshua Wong announces hunger strike to call for talks with government
HKFS leader Alex Chow admits that escalation action was largely 'a failure'
Good evening and welcome to scmp.com's live coverage of Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests. Overnight, students gathered near government headquarters in a tense stand-off with police in which pepper spray and batons were used. Now Admiralty is under siege after students gathered there following a call from their leaders, vowing to escalate action shortly after the deadlocked protest entered its second month. Protesters are pushing Beijing for democratic reforms in the 2017 chief executive election.
11pm: Joshua Wong Chi-fung, convenor of the student activist group Scholarism, announced that he and two other members of the group would stage an indefinite hunger strike to call for open talks with Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor on political reform.
"Carrie Lam said earlier the door to dialogue was always open. Our humble demand is to ask for dialogue to discuss the possibility of withdrawing the current [reform] proposal and relaunch the five-step reform process," Wong said, adding that no other preconditions would be set for the talks.
Wong Ji-yuet, a form six student who plans to join the hunger strike, said the democratic movement had stagnated and she hoped the hunger strikes would apply pressure on the government to respond to the student group's demands.
9.30pm: Chaos broke out around the main stage in Admiralty when a masked group of people approached the stage and started removing metal barriers protecting it.
One man jumped onto the stage and refused to leave. He demanded student leaders come up to explain their actions yesterday, as the crowd grew emotional and called on him to get down. The stalemate continued for around five minutes. The man was dragged off the stage shortly afterwards by a group of unknown people.
"When the police start beating people next to us, should we remain inactive and do nothing? We should help the others by at least protecting them from the beating, not just raising our hands," he said. He did not identify himself and spoke wearing a mask.