Letters | Hong Kong universities must learn the right lessons from protest chaos

University heads’ reluctance to allow the police on campus to deal with protesters led to increased violence and destruction

Hong Kong protests

Letters

Published: 7:15am, 2 Jan 2020

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It is common for people to reflect on the past year before they plan for the next. I believe people and organisations alike in Hong Kong, especially universities, should undertake a serious review of the social unrest in 2019 before charting their way forward.

The protesters’ illegal occupation of university campuses was not just confined to Polytechnic University, where their actions made Hong Kong infamous as a city of chaos.

Just a few days before the PolyU saga, Chinese University was occupied by protesters who also destroyed University MTR station, the main public transport node for students, staff and the general public travelling to CUHK. Non-local students fled the university hostels as access was controlled by protesters who had stockpiled petrol bombs on campus. There was a similar exodus of mainland students from other universities.

A university president, as the head of the institution, is responsible for maintaining a safe working and learning environment for the university community. But some of these leaders failed miserably to discharge this fundamental responsibility, showing little aptitude for crisis management.

In some cases, university management allowed their staff to be harassed by protesters. For example, a lecturer of Hong Kong Community College, a self-financed extension of Polytechnic University, was “detained” for several hours by students because he had expressed views opposing the protests.

Some universities were against the police entering their campuses to stop protesters’ vandalism. Thus, protesters roamed freely on campuses, damaging university property and stealing chemicals from labs. The destruction was so pervasive that the universities had to shut down their operations as it was no longer safe for students and staff to study and work there.

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In mid-November, nine universities issued a joint statement implying that they had become victims of the government's inability to resolve the political issues with the protesters.

I cannot sympathise with their plight, because universities are not shopping malls. Some shopping malls did not ask the police for help to stop protesters’ vandalism, for fear of provoking the protesters into attacking their staff and customers. These were essentially business decisions.

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However, as the core business of universities is education and contribution to humanity, they should safeguard basic moral and legal principles. University management should not condone criminal acts committed on campus or prevent the authorities from entering their institutions to restore law and order.

As Secretary for Security John Lee Ka-chiu rightly put it, nowhere in Hong Kong is beyond the rule of law, including university campuses. I hope universities will have learned their lesson in the new year.

Tony Leung, Kwai Chung

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