Outgoing HKU vice-chancellor rejects calls to sack Occupy leader and legal scholar Benny Tai
Professor Peter Mathieson said he has received a number of letters asking him to remove controversial legal scholar from the university’s law faculty
The departing vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong on Wednesday rejected calls to oust Benny Tai Yiu-ting, the controversial legal scholar and co-founder of the 2014 Occupy protests.
Speaking to the media after officiating at the university’s inauguration ceremony for the last time, Professor Peter Mathieson revealed that he had recently received a handful of requests to remove Tai from the institution’s law faculty.
Occupy Central co-founder Benny Tai slams ‘shameful’ middle-aged protesters who have let Hong Kong student leaders take rap
“I read these letters and don’t agree with them all and I don’t expect to agree with everybody,” he said.
“We have our procedures for taking actions against students and staff if we think they infringe the regulations of the university,” Mathieson said.
“But, we are not a surrogate courtroom. The court has its own opportunity to make decisions about guilt or innocence and we respect those decisions.”
The vice-chancellor’s remarks came as pro-establishment legislator and former Law Society president Junius Ho Kwan-yiu stepped up pressure on the university to sack Tai. Ho had earlier written to the university council chairman Professor Arthur Li Kwok-cheung to ask for Tai to be removed. Ho also organised an online petition to call for his sacking.