Campaigners plan sit-in over national education curriculum in Hong Kong
Campaigners to protest at government headquarters over refusal by committee to discuss scrapping of controversial curriculum
Anti-national education campaigners plan to stage a sit-in at government headquarters in response to a refusal by officials to even consider scrapping the controversial curriculum.
The protest would be on September 1, two days before the start of the new school term, said the Civil Alliance Against National Education, which comprises various groups that oppose a decision to force all public school pupils to take lessons in Chinese patriotism.
It follows anger over Wednesday's first meeting of an advisory body that was set up by the government after 90,000 parents, pupils and teachers took to the streets to call a halt to plans to "brainwash" schoolchildren.
No mention of withdrawing the curriculum was made by the new Committee on the Implementation of Moral and National Education, which concentrated instead on the difficulties of introducing the lessons and how to screen teaching materials.
Alliance spokesman Shum Wai-nam said yesterday: "We don't think the government has responded to the voices of the public by just setting up a committee."
He spoke as dozens of pupils and alliance members demonstrated at the government headquarters in Admiralty, in an initial response to the committee's stance. They displayed a long black banner bearing some of the 100,000 signatures collected in a petition against the curriculum over the past few weeks.