By Benjamin Garvey
HONG KONG
The day after student protest leaders were informed their permits to travel to mainland China had been canceled, a report claims that more than 500 students and other activists have been similarly blacklisted.
The Chinese language Sing Tao Daily - citing unnamed sources - reported Sunday that the list includes past and present leaders of the Hong Kong Federation of Students and student activist group Scholarism.
The student leaders stopped from travelling to the Chinese mainland Saturday had planned to go to Beijing to press their demands for real universal suffrage, but were prevented from boarding a flight to Beijing by the when their permits were revoked.
The trio had been instrumental in a campaign that has seen thousands take to the streets to call for genuine universal suffrage for the 2017 chief executive election.
Nathan Law, one of the three student leaders, told The Anadolu Agency Sunday that he was “very sad” to discover that his home-return permit had been canceled.
“I feel it's unreasonable,” he said, adding that in the short term he would not be trying to enter mainland China again.
Scholarism has called on the Hong Kong government Sunday to explain why the travel documents were invalidated, according to public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong.
Movement founder Joshua Wong said that tension between the protesters and the government would rise if the administration ignored the matter.
Separately, the former British colony's financial secretary, John Tsang, has repeated calls for the protesters occupying streets to end their demonstrations, saying they would "lose the moral high ground" if they didn't.
Writing on his blog, Tsang said it was time for the protesters to be rational.
He added it was not right for protesters to violate court orders as it would undermine the rule of law.
The protests, in their eighth week, are seen as the biggest challenge to Beijing's grip on the semi-autonomous territory since the handover in 1997.
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