One of the members from the Hong Kong Federation of Students participating in
the 64-hour hunger strike in Hong Kong. (Photo by Francesca Ayala).

HONG KONG - Members from the Hong Kong Teachers' Union publicly offered their support on Tuesday toward the group of university students who has gone on a hunger strike to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

Imbibing only bottled watter and energy drinks, 13 members of the Hong Kong Federation of Students began a 64-hour hunger strike at Times Square in Hong Kong's Causeway Bay on Monday.

The students say they want to pay their respects to the hundreds, or possibly thousands of students who lost their lives in Beijing rallying for democracy in 1989 and urge their contemporaries to remember the significance of that event.

The strike will end Thursday morning, June 4, which marks the official 20-year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.

Hong Kong is the only part of China where people are allowed to commemorate this event.

When asked how his peers were feeling on the second day of their 64-hour hunger strike, 23-year-old Winston Leung, student union president of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said, "They feel tired, but their spirits will support them... [This hunger strike doesn't] compare to what happened 20 years ago."

Leung was only 3 years old at the time of the massacre, but he recalls exactly how he felt when he first saw the footage of the government-ordered crackdown.

"It was really sad," he said. "I can't believe the government would take away the lives of students."

The hunger strike has earned the support of the Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union. Members of the association who supported the 1989 protesters came to Times Square to visit the students and address the press.

"Their action is encouraging to us," said Cheung Man Kwong, president of the teachers' union. "It will show that the people of Hong Kong won't forget the massacre."

For others, the message of the students' hunger strike was meaningless. "This is stupid," said one passerby as he walked past the group.

Patrick Ng, 22, a journalism student at Shue Yan University, did not participate in the hunger strike but came to support his friends and distribute free copies of an independent publication titled, "20 years -- Where is our country going?"

"This is about the history of a government which kills people," he said. "It's the real history. It cannot be edited or deleted."