HK's student protesters must stay focused on national education

Here we are again, faced with another student movement. In Hong Kong, a campaign opposing the introduction of moral and national education in schools is gaining momentum: protesters are taking turns to fast in a hunger strike relay; some are calling for a class boycott. The movement, started by a group of secondary school students who call themselves Scholarism, has received support from different sectors of society. Their main demand is for the government to scrap the course.

We see the same young faces, the same steel in their eyes, the burning passion, the fearlessness. And we see again parents take to the streets, academics and journalists rally in support, and government officials try to placate with token gestures. Needless to say, all this reminds one of the Tiananmen democracy movement 23 years ago.

A turning point of Tiananmen was the notorious "4/26 editorial" that branded the students' movement an upheaval. That People's Daily editorial of April 26, 1989 incensed protesters: the demonstrations grew, the hunger strikes began, and a demand to retract statements made in the editorial became a rallying call of the campaign. Even today, some student leaders of the time still live in its shadow.

The main thrust of the editorial was to vilify the students' push for democracy, recasting it as nothing short of a disturbance with catastrophic consequences for the nation: "If we tolerate this disturbance or try to appease it, and let it go unchecked, serious chaos will occur … a China with very good prospects and a very bright future will become a chaotic and unstable China without any future."

What's happening in Hong Kong is very different from Tiananmen. Yet in recent days, the kind of vilification of the national education campaign that we've seen in public debate reminded me of the 4/26 editorial. These efforts don't carry the weight of the state-sanctioned People's Daily, but they clearly have some official backing, and their arguments bring to mind events in Beijing 23 years ago. This is Hong Kong's 4/26 moment.

Typical of the slurs levelled at the students were found in one episode of ATV Focus - "Constructive forces versus destructive forces: learn to distinguish good from evil or risk becoming pawns" - and a Ta Kung Pao editorial, "The political motives of black hands behind the 'brainwashing' charges".

Their argument uses two main tactics. One is to belittle the intelligence and character of the young students, and deny that they are capable of independent thought and action. They are described as puppets manipulated by a "minority group of people with evil intent", the sacrificial pawns of a political plot. These behind-the-scenes manipulators are called "black hands". A "black hand" of 22 years ago, Liu Xiaobo, is today a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and locked up in a mainland jail.