Hong Kong protests: Chinese University threatens to cancel student event marking demonstrators’ five-day campus occupation

Chinese University students’ exhibition advert bearing slogan popular with last year’s anti-government movement ‘may be illegal’

CUHK bosses warn they may scrap the event, expressing concern over ‘biased’ descriptions, potential damage to institution

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The clashes last November on and around university campuses in Hong Kong were some of the most violent of the 2019 unrest. Photo: Sam Tsang

Published: 9:46am, 5 Nov 2020Updated: 10:58pm, 5 Nov 2020

A Hong Kong university has threatened to cancel a student exhibition commemorating one of the most chaotic episodes of last year’s anti-government protests over a poster it described as potentially illegal.

Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) students have released a poster bearing the popular protest slogan “Free Hong Kong; revolution now” to advertise an upcoming display marking demonstrators’ occupation of the Sha Tin campus and the subsequent police siege in November 2019.

CUHK on Wednesday night said the poster carried “biased descriptions” and demanded that the student organisers immediately amended or removed it, urging them “not to challenge the law”.

The exhibition commemorates the “Siege of CUHK”, referring to anti-government protesters’ takeover of the Sha Tin campus from November 11, where fiery clashes between radical protesters and riot police had broken out.

Protesters on the campus had thrown objects from a bridge onto the highway and railway tracks beneath to block traffic, sparking a five-day occupation which turned the education site into a battlefield, with tear gas and petrol bombs exchanged between police and hardcore elements of the anti-government movement.

The words “Free Hong Kong; revolution now” – a rallying call of Hong Kong protesters in 2019 – were printed in English on a black flag featured on the poster advertising the exhibition. The phrase on the flag was partially obscured.

Chinese University was one of the six campuses occupied by demonstrators during the protest mayhem that gripped Hong Kong for much of November last year.