Meet the 17-year-old leading Hong Kong's protests
Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY
4:29 p.m. EDT October 2, 2014
17 year-old student protest leader Joshua Wong speaks to fellow students on the street outside the Hong Kong Government Complex on Oct. 1, 2014.(Photo: Getty Images)
HONG KONG — Joshua Wong is only 17, but already he ranks as a veteran political protester and is the most prominent student leader of Hong Kong's "Umbrella Revolution" that is trying to force China's hand over democratic changes.
As much as he is admired in Hong Kong, he is loathed in Beijing.
At 14, Wong co-founded the student-run pro-democracy movement Scholarism. At 15, he led a successful public fight against Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying's plan to introduce "national education," a controversial curriculum of patriotic material that critics said favored China's ruling Communist Party.
USATODAY
Standoff in Hong Kong on China's National Day
Now Wong, and tens of thousands of people camped out on the streets of Hong Kong, want Leung to step down and for Beijing to withdraw its restrictive framework for candidates in the 2017 leader elections — the first time residents will experience universal suffrage.
Thin and bespectacled, Wong's appearance belies his political and physical determination. His idol is another slight figure, the 1989 Tiananmen Square student leader Wang Dan, Wong told the Financial Times newspaper this month.
But Wong would prefer to avoid the bloody denouement of that campaign for Hong Kong. "If the soldiers come, we would all go back home ... we don't want to see blood," he said.
On Wednesday, Wong led 30 fellow activists to a government flag-raising ceremony as part of National Day, where they turned their backs and crossed their arms in the air in a show of defiance.
They acted "to show our disagreement towards the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), especially for the decision made on political reform in Hong Kong," and to demand Leung's resignation, he said.
On Friday, he spent 40 hours in detention for storming a government complex, effectively helping to kick-start the recent protests on a massive scale.
PHOTO A student protester becomes emotional while pleading for a peaceful resolution on Oct. 2 in Hong Kong. (Photo: Wong Maye-E, AP)
Wong is also a regular target for mainland China's state-run media, and he has drawn heavy criticism from Beijing.
In a recent article in the Global Times, a popular tabloid that enjoys strong Party backing, Wong was accused of being supported and funded by U.S. organizations to foment trouble in Hong Kong. That in itself is not unusual. Beijing consistently blames "hostile foreign forces" for a wide range of problems.
USATODAY
In China, Hong Kong protests out of sight, out of mind
The current scale of the civil disobedience movement is beyond his expectations, though, Wong said Wednesday. He declined to predict its length or likely outcome.
"Among all the people in Hong Kong, there is only one person who can decide whether the current movement will last and he is Leung. If Leung can accept our demands ... (the) movement will naturally come to an end," he said.
***
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc .
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị .
conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
03102014
___________
Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là ĐỒNG LÕA với TỘI ÁC
No comments:
Post a Comment