Anti-Occupy group’s hotline for reporting student strikes branded ‘white terror’

Beijing-loyalist activists have come under fierce criticism for setting up a hotline to expose the names of schools where class boycotts are being organised.

Students have announced they will stage a week-long boycott of classes from September 22 after Beijing imposed a restrictive reform framework for the 2017 chief executive election.

Yesterday, the Alliance for Peace and Democracy said it has set up a hotline for the public to report on class boycotts in secondary schools.

The school's principal, its parent-teacher association and the Education Bureau would be informed if the hotline received multiple reports of plans for a class boycott in any school. And the names of schools might be made public after the reports were verified, said the alliance's spokesman Robert Chow Yung.

But the campaign drew a storm of criticism, with worries it would create "white terror" - a term associated with political repression - in schools and heap pressure on teachers and pupils. "This suggestion is terrible and I cannot understand the rationale behind it," said Lee Suet-ying, chairwoman of the Association of the Heads of Secondary Schools.

Lee said the relationship between schools, pupils and parents was close, and did not need external interference. "Schools are not in a confrontational relationship with students and parents. What's the point of having 'Cultural Revolution-style' whistle-blowers among us?"

Education sector lawmaker Ip Kin-yuen, a pan-democrat who vowed to veto the government's electoral reform proposal, said the campaign was "worrying and unacceptable". He said the teachers had the professional knowledge to lead the discussions of different social issues impartially and critically.