University of Hong Kong whistle-blower Billy Fung tries to ride out storm over council revelations
Branded a liar with no integrity after disclosing details of a closed-door HKU council meeting, student leader Billy Fung says he has no regrets
After joining teachers and classmates at a silent march on campus to defend the autonomy of his university last week, Billy Fung Jing-en returned to the student union office, where he spends most of the time these days, looking tired.
The 21-year-old president of the University of Hong Kong Student Union says he has a lot of follow-up work to do after hitting the headlines for exposing the reasons behind the governing council's controversial decision to reject a liberal professor's candidacy for a key managerial post.
In disputing the contents of Fung's leak, those whose remarks were allegedly exposed by him have branded Fung a "liar", saying he was "bad in English" and accusing him of "having no integrity". To which Fung shrugs his shoulders and says: "I did what I thought was right."
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Fung was already a controversial figure when he ran for the union presidency at the start of the year, after it was revealed he had a grandfather in the Communist Party. In Hong Kong's heated political climate, student elections are also full of concerns over whether the candidates will defend the city's core values.
"I haven't been to Beijing for a long time," Fung insists. "At that time I didn't even know my grandpa was in the CCP. I only knew he was a doctor. We seldom talk about politics. It's not like his political affiliation has a bearing on me."
During the election, having returned to campus from the Occupy protest site in Admiralty, Fung expected retaliation against key organisers in last year's pro-democracy sit-ins - including a founder who taught at HKU - but did not imagine the university as the next political arena.