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
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”.
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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.
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.
The week-long exhibition, organised by the university’s student bodies including its student union, was scheduled to run on campus between November 11 and 18. A timeline and photographs of last year’s incident would form part of the display.
Under a headline of “Never Forgive, Never Forget”, the poster shows scenes from the campus occupation of protesters wearing gas masks, crouching behind improvised defences and holding up flags.
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The student union wrote on its Facebook page on Wednesday that the incident must be remembered, as the “psychological traumatic experience of the siege continues to haunt us, and is forever etched deeply into our hearts and minds”.
But within hours of the poster appearing online, the university issued a written statement saying it was “deeply concerned” about the promotional material distributed by students for the exhibition, warning some of its content “may be illegal”.
“The incident which happened at CUHK in November last year has affected not only university stakeholders but also the general public,” the statement read.
It added: “The university back then already strongly condemned such irresponsible behaviour which jeopardised human lives. Our campus also suffered large-scale vandalism by masked people, and it took great effort from across the university to heal the wound.”
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The statement said the university felt “extreme regret over biased descriptions” of the incident by the student organisers, adding it would not tolerate any illegal behaviour and would follow up on any acts damaging the institution’s reputation.
CUHK said the venue where the exhibition was supposed to take place was managed by the student union under the university’s authorisation, adding it was within its rights and responsibilities to cancel events which violated the rules.
The student union of Chinese University’s New Asia College, one of the event’s co-organisers, accused management of making unreasonable demands and practising “self-censorship”, saying the protest scenes depicted on the poster were merely “showing the historical truth” based on real photos.
Anson Yip Tsz-huen, vice-chairwoman of Chinese University student union’s provisional executive committee, said she was “frustrated” by the institution’s reaction.
She said the union received a call from the university asking it to remove the poster within an hour of students publishing it online at about 8pm on Wednesday. She added the union would not take down the poster at this point in time.
