Public gets behind call to wear black
Members of the public on Friday chose to wear black to show their opposition to national education classes, with as many as as three out of four donning dark clothes around Central.
The week-long public protest against national education took on a relaxed tone on Friday morning, as hunger strikers played guitars and passing office workers wore black clothes in a symbolic show of support.
Dozens of people turned up at the government headquarters in Admiralty to support the 13 hunger strikers. One striker, James Hon Lin-shan, had been fasting for more than 130 hours as of noon.
The Alliance Against National Education had called for people to dress in black today, to show their opposition to the national education curriculum. In a rough count by the South China Morning Post this morning near the HSBC headquarters, about three to four people out of 10 were wearing black clothes.
Among them was 27-year-old Pak Hui, who wore a black top and trousers. “I’m obviously responding to the alliance’s call,” he said.
”It’s not necessary to introduce the national education subject. We have civic education, and liberal studies in our curriculum. If we let them introduce national education, even if they say it won’t be biased, they will gradually add in elements that we don’t want in the future.”
Others ignored the protest dress code. An engineering student at the University of Hong Kong surnamed Pang said he did not dress in black because he was “not interested in politics”.