More than 2,500 HKU students, staff and alumni sign petition against dismissal of Hong Kong legal scholar Benny Tai
- The HKU student union also urged the university council to make public the justifications for Tai’s dismissal within a week
- Union president Edy Jeh says the signatures collected have proved that the council members who voted to dismiss Tai were ‘only a minority’
More than 2,500 students, staff and alumni at the University of Hong Kong have signed a petition demanding its governing council withdraw the dismissal of legal scholar and Occupy movement co-founder Benny Tai Yiu-ting.
In the petition, submitted to the university on Monday, the student union, which organised the campaign, also urged the council to make public the justifications for Tai’s dismissal within a week and amend the existing procedures of having government-appointed members sitting on the body, including the chairman.
Tai, 56, was removed from his tenured post as an associate professor of law last Tuesday over his convictions related to the 2014 civil disobedience movement, after the council – formed by a majority of members from outside the institution, including government appointees – voted 18 to two to reverse an earlier recommendation by the university’s senate.
The senate, a 50-member body consisting of mostly academics, had suggested that there were not enough grounds for Tai’s dismissal even though he committed misconduct.
Tai has filed an appeal to Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, the ex officio chancellor of HKU, against his dismissal. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison in April last year on two public nuisance charges, and had been on bail since last August pending an appeal.
The council blatantly ignored the decision of the senate, and also used political considerations to override a professional academic decision
“The council blatantly ignored the decision of the senate, and also used political considerations to override a professional academic decision,” HKU student union president Edy Jeh Tsz-lam said on Monday.
But council chairman Arthur Li Kwok-cheung, also a member of city leader Lam’s cabinet, insisted the decision to remove Tai had strictly followed university procedures and had “nothing to do with politics”.