A smaller group of younger secondary school students are expected to join the boycott on Friday.
A police spokesman urged the students to "maintain social order" and to express their views "peacefully and rationally". Scores of police corralled the crowds with metal barricades and blocked roads. They also shouted for China's president Xi Jinping to "shut up" on matters related to Hong Kong political development. "CY Step down," the crowds chanted outside Leung's colonial era mansion in the hills above the financial district. He said in a statement that he respected the "students' aspirations and perseverance on democracy and their expectations on and willingness to take responsibility for the future of Hong Kong". MINOR CLASHES The march came after Leung ignored a 48-hour ultimatum to meet the students.
The protesters are demanding full democracy in a series of escalating acts that will culminate in an "Occupy Central" blockade of roads in the main financial district on Oct. The student-led march that organizers said drew more than four thousand people is a continuation of four full days of activities including citywide boycotts by thousands of university students, public assemblies, marches and speeches. It wants to limit 2017 elections for Hong Kong's leader to a handful of candidates loyal to Beijing. But Beijing last month rejected demands for people to freely choose the city's next leader, prompting threats from pro-democracy activists to shut down the Central financial district. Hong Kong returned from British to Chinese rule in 1997 as a "special administrative region" with a high degree of autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed on mainland China under a formula known as "one country, two systems". Leung is our most wanted criminal," said one of the students, Nathan Law. Police tried several times to stop the human flow, holding up yellow posters warning against a "breach of the law", only for protesters to break through and continue marching. Carrying a huge image of Leung Chun-ying with vampire's teeth, the protesters chanted for the Beijing-backed leader to step down during a march snaking through commercial buildings, footbridges and streets up to the back gate of Government House. By Yimou Lee HONG KONG (Reuters) - Thousands of students and protesters marched to the official residence of Hong Kong's leader on Thursday to demand a meeting, defying police warnings, as tensions simmer over the financial hub's democratic future.
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