Hong Kong army cadets chairman plays down 'secret' inauguration claims
Youth leader says he tried to have more media outlets admitted to PLA base ceremony
The chairman of a new military-style youth group has sought to defuse suspicions arising from its "secretive" inauguration ceremony at the weekend, saying he had tried in vain to get more media outlets allowed inside the PLA base where the event was held.
Only a handful of news organisations, all pro-establishment, were invited to the closed-door inauguration of the Hong Kong Army Cadets Association on Stonecutters Island. Critics accuse it of trying to "indoctrinate" the young.
Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying defended the association on the same day that its chairman, Bunny Chan Chung-bun, spoke up. Leung said it was the responsibility of everyone in the country to "serve the motherland" - as members of the association swore to do on Sunday.
Chan explained they had chosen the People's Liberation Army naval base to host the ceremony because it was rent-free.
"On Saturday, many media outlets asked me if they could get inside to report," he told DBC radio yesterday.
"But I could not secure the approval. That's because it is a restricted military site. The PLA is very strict about it. Approvals are needed to get in and out."
The media outlets invited included newspaper and state broadcaster China Central Television. The association has no website and did not announce its inauguration, or even its existence, before the event.
Chan said the association was founded by young people who had taken part in a military summer camp for Hong Kong youth.
Those people had learned marching skills in the camp and wanted to impart the skills to more young people so they could get fit and strong, Chan said.
Several dozen were sworn in, all of them university students, he said.
According to an Education Bureau circular sent last year to all secondary schools, the camp was organised by the bureau, the PLA and the Concerted Efforts Resource Centre, whose founding president was former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa's wife, Betty Tung Chiu Hung-ping.
