Student leader Nathan Law hopes to represent a generation

Nathan Law Kwun-chung is the only student leader of the Occupy Movement taking part in the Legislative Council elections.

From the 79-day mass protest two years ago to the disaffiliation campaign against the Federation of Students, of which he was leader, Law, 23, has gone through a baptism of fire.

“I haven’t taken a good rest since Occupy,” he said. “It was a great burden on me physically and emotionally.”

Student leaders of Occupy including Law faced huge pressure in the last days of the protest, which ended in arrests. A fifth-year student of cultural studies at Lingnan University, Law said he had never thought of entering politics when he was younger, thinking it “a dirty game with people fighting among one another for self-interest”.

But being in the thick of the sit-ins changed his view as he witnessed the “limitations” of established pan-democratic parties.

“The pan-democrats talk about restarting the reform exercise and ‘ABC’ [anyone but CY Leung to be chief executive]. To me it’s a conservative agenda and it’s doomed,” he said. “I want a more far-sighted, sustainable cause.”