HONG KONG - A SMALL group of Hong Kong students have launched a hunger strike as a tribute to campaigners who starved themselves during protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square 20 years ago.

The group of 13 students launched the 64-hour strike ahead of Thursday's anniversary of the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests, which left hundreds, possibly thousands dead across the Chinese capital.

Before the 1989 crackdown, hundreds of students among the huge protest launched a hunger strike, a move that historians believe alarmed some top Communist Party leaders.

'We want to show that a group of students who were not (in Beijing) can display their support not only mentally, but physically,' 21-year-old hunger striker Yip Cho-yan, acting president of Hong Kong Baptist University's student union, told AFP.

'We want to remind people of the students who were bare-handed but were killed with guns,' she said 24-hours into the strike, which began on Monday and was set to end on Thursday morning.

Mr Winston Leung, 23, student union president of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said the current strike was an attempt to keep the memory of Tiananmen alive.

Recalling how he felt when he first saw footage from the protests, he said: 'I can't believe the government would take away the lives of students.'

Hong Kong is the only place on Chinese soil where the demonstrations will be commemorated, as it has a separate legal system from the mainland. -- AFP